Movies That Should Have Been Great But Get Mucked Up
Red Riding Hood (2011)This being part of the free movie weekend, I was actually looking forward to seeing something good. After all, how can you go wrong with a movie that stars Amanda Seyfried, Virginia Madsen, Billy Burke, Julie Christie, Gary Oldman, Lukas Haas and a great supporting cast? Apparently very, VERY wrong. This was so incredibly bad and boring, I actually took very few notes because, well, very little happened. I was so incredibly disappointed, as Gary Oldman is on my list of actors to watch no matter what the movie, he is so great at 'disappearing' into the roles he has that you sometimes don't even recognize him (Would it be very embarrassing if I admitted I didn't know he was Gordon in the Bale Batman movies until the second one?) and so I thought this HAS to be good. But it wouldn't be craptacular if that were true. So, you know this story, mucked up and scrambled as it is:
Valerie lives in Daggerhorn, a village constantly in fear of a werewolf. She is in love with Peter (Shiloh Fernandez, who she personally can't stand so it was kind of funny to see them be love interests). Unfortunately, this being the dark ages (literally, a lot of the movie was hard to see) she has been betrothed to a wealthier kid, Henry. The wolf, who has a 'truce' with the village if they give it their best livestock, breaks it one night and murders Valarie's sister, who she then discovers had an intense crush on Henry. Since she was older, Valerie asks why they weren't to marry. Her mother reveals that she also had been in love before becoming betrothed to Valerie's father, and in fact her sister was only half - and she was also Henry's half sister. Soap opera stuff happens in all centuries I guess.
So the men drink until they're brave enough and go out to get the wolf. They come back with a wolf's head and say boom, it's done. But in comes Father Solomon (Gary Oldman) who tells them they're dumb, because a werewolf becomes human again after they die. He then gives the protracted story of killing one that was, in fact, his own wife. Nice guy. He also tells them that in a Blood Moon (moon showing red, duh) anyone bitten will turn, instead of dying. So he's got to hurry as it's Blood Moon week now. 
He has the village wait on holy ground (in this story, werewolves can't get into churches, duh) but the werewolf, much stronger and larger than he expected, kills a bunch of people who insisted on staying out and partying, plus some of his men. They search the village, convinced the werewolf is one of them. The wolf shows again, this time cornering Valarie. It 'talks' to her (yeah, yeah I know) telling her to come with him. He's got 'big brown eyes' so now she's suspicious of like, half the village (Do you know how many inbred villagers are gonna have brown eyes? That's rhetorical by the way.).
We have long periods of nothing and short spurts of action. The Father isn't above torture to find out what he wants - he tortures and kills an autistic boy because he 'babbles the devil's language' (duh - Gary wasn't very likable in this thing) and finally captures Valerie, since a witness saw her 'talking' to the wolf, besides, she has a red cape and that's the Devil's color, right? Massive duh quotient. And I'm bored out of my mind.
Long story short: Henry and Peter get together to free Valerie. Father Solomon gets bit and a taste of his own medicine when his own men kill him. It's revealed that the werewolf is Valerie's father (she had been convinced it was Peter) and the reason her older sister was killed was he tried to 'talk' to her first, but when she couldn't understand him, he knew she wasn't his. Nice. He tells Valerie to come with him or he'll just kill everybody. Peter shows up and we have fighting for an interminable time. Finally, Valerie distracts her father, saying she has a 'gift' in her basket for him. He gets close and also gets an ax in the back by Peter who he thought he'd killed but nope. Valerie shows what's in the basket - the hand of Father Solomon, who had applied silver to his fingernails (he was a bit of a freak) and she sinks the hand into his gut, killing him.
But he bit Peter. And the moon is still red. What to do, what to do. Because she loves him, and she will be able to understand him (I guess) when he changes, she says she'll wait for him. Why now exactly? He's a werewolf, and unless she wants to be one too or have the children of one.... oh well, I was so bored I didn't care one way or another. And this abortion of children's tales is over.
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