Red Riding Hood

In Red Riding Hood, the age-old fairytale of a little girl who learns the perils of talking to strangers has been turned into a sort of supernatural murder mystery by the director of the teen vampire flick Twilight. In this version, the red-cloaked heroine, played by doe-eyed Amanda Seyfried, is given a name – Valerie – and cast as a headstrong and independent-minded young lady who would never fall for the tricks of some hairy beast camouflaged as her grandmother. Although engaged by parental arrangement to Henry, the respectable scion of a wealthy blacksmithing family, her heart really belongs to Peter, the darkly handsome town bad-boy whose chosen occupation, woodworker, apparently ranks far below blacksmith in the social hierarchy. Valerie is inclined to run off with Peter, but soon such inclinations must be shelved when her sister turns up dead, the apparent victim of a wolf that has terrorised the residents of Daggerhorn, the rustic, medieval mountain village in which the film is set. What we're left with is a gauzy romance that might have even ardent Twilight fans rolling their eyes.