The girl in the red riding hood is Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), the prettiest girl in all of some mountaintop village... somewhere, in... some time period. Everyone there speaks in modern American accents (which is actually a blessing, but still a semi-plot hole, I guess) and makes no mention of the era, so who knows -- they could be in The Village 2 for all we know. They have been plagued by a murderous werewolf for two generations, and after Valerie's sister is killed by it they decide they've had enough and call in a renowned werewolf hunter (Gary Oldman in his best purple velvet dress) to help them catch the beast. This village is so Team Edward.

But Valerie has another problem, one which the film treats as equal to the one involving a hellish wolf mutant murdering her family members: the two cutest boys in town want to marry her, and she doesn't know which one to choose. You see, one is rich and hot, and one is middle class and hot, but one of her best friends. (Not that there seems to be much of a difference between the social classes in this village, but whatever.) She spends a great deal of the movie trying to decide between them, and it's as riveting as you might imagine.

The rest of the movie focuses on a witch hunt led by Oldman, as he tortures people he deems suspicious and tries to burn purported witches in pursuit of the werewolf's identity. I don't know if that was meant as some sort of political statement, but considering the rest of the film's mind-blowing lack of subtext I'd say it's safe to assume you can just take it at face value. The entire movie is an aggressively literal interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood, and for a movie based on one of the most infamously sexual fairy tales, it's almost rebelliously chaste. The movie contains no sex, no bare abs, no hint of a comment on the threat of female sexuality. The most sexual thing in it is that everyone wears short sleeves in the snow in every scene. It's not exactly a movie you see for the smut, is what I'm saying.

The horror elements are filmed amateurishly, and rely on a lot of cheap shocks, with the wolf chomping at the camera unexpectedly, which was a yawn. The lone bright spot is the great Julie Christie, who plays Valerie's oddball grandmother on the edge of town, but she serves no symbolic purpose, and in the hands of a lesser actress she'd be just another bland addition to the story. And I won't spoil the ending (which is so sappy it makes Twilight look like The Expendables), but the person who ends up being the werewolf and his or her reason for killing is decidedly less than exciting.

It's a missed opportunity, this movie, because the source material is so rich, but this one was made for the middle-school set, and I'm sure they'll like it just fine. Let me put it this way: It's not as bad as Beastly, but it's also about as good as Twilight. Think about that before you buy a ticket.

Did you see Red Riding Hood? Tell us what you thought in the comments, then see why we think every Amanda Seyfried movie is a fairy tale!

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