Rotkappchen: The Blood of Red Riding Hood Movie Review
Rotkappchen: The Blood of Red Riding Hood Movie Review
Little Red Goes Pink
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Since I prefer to be as much in the dark (woods) as possible before seeing any movie for review, I honestly had no idea that Rotkappchen: The Blood of Red Riding Hood bordered on soft-core porn. (This is definitely one for the "Red Hood Diaries", should David Duchovny ever want to head on over to Skinemax as a series host.) It's got gratuitous nudity, lusty lesbianism, and more dildo than Naked Lunch.
Fortunately, there is more to the story than that. There is actually a good movie in here somewhere. The story begins — like the fairytale — innocently enough. After a little horror-hook to whet our appetites, we meet sweet and lovely Rose (Stefanie Geils), a shy teenager from Germany just arriving to live with her grandmother (Betty Biehler) in America.
Rose is red, literally, while everyone else is in black and white. It's a nice arty-appeal idea, one of many to recommend this film from a visual standpoint. While Rotkappchen is obviously a cheaply-made indie and doesn't look or sound up to studio snuff, the cinematographer (Harry Sparks) took great care in using crafty angles, composition and marvelous mirror imagery. The use of women's bodies — the curve of a cocked hip, the bulge of a calf muscle, or the swell of a glute — as architectural framing and foreground stratagem is truly inspired.
Almost as soon as Rose arrives at Grandma's house, a "wolf" pops up in the form of an alluring dark-skinned, heavy muscled young man, Nick (Phil Gibson). Swaggering Nick just manages to keep his fangs hidden, but once school starts Nick's girlfriend, tough bombshell Bridgette (Nicole Leigh Vuono), immediately extends her claws and picks a fight on campus. Naïve, virginal Rose isn't sure what to do, but she does like the attention Nick lavishes on her — and when he breaks up with Bridgette to be with her, she can't resist. Rose's new friends — sassy Summer (Sativa Verte) and dorky David (Chris O’Brocki) — have mixed feelings on Rose's sexual blossoming. But there is no doubt about how Grandma feels: She knows the Big Bad Wolf when she sees him.
As far as the acting goes, it's all over the map. Some of the players are uneven throughout, one or two are actually good, but most are simply incapable of doing more than uttering the otherwise decent dialogue. On top of that, Rotkappchen loses its way thanks to lack of edits and pacing. As I said, there is a good movie in here somewhere and I think if it were re-cut (DP Harry Sparks is also the editor) it could actually work — I mean, do we really need another "shopping spree and makeover" montage in any movie not starring Hilary Duff?
As with so many cinematic adaptations of this classic tale, the writer/director (say hello to Harry Sparks, again) chooses to set it in modern times and to focus almost solely on the psycho-sexual underpinnings of the fable. That's fine, but it's already been done better in movies like Freeway and Hard Candy. That is not to say Rotkappchen doesn't have a slightly different take, but I would have preferred more emphasis on the scary than on the sex. The limited budget hurts what little there is of the horror element — the phony wolf is a howler — but Sparks does have chops in the suspense department. It could have been played up.
Overall I liked the film, but it's for LRRH completists only. Even at that, Rotkappchen is worth seeing (with those big eyes of yours) just once.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson