Movie Review: Red Riding Hood

    I had been looking forward to Red Riding Hood since it was in pre-production. I love the older darker versions of fairytales and this seemed like it would be sufficiently creepy, I love werewolf movies (with the exception of anything Twilight. Hate the books, won't see the movies), and Michael Shanks is in it. For those of you who don't know this is Michael Shanks:

He was Daniel Jackson on Stargate and I'll pretty much watch him in anything. Really. I even own a copy of MegaSnake. (Not porn, I swear, might have been better if it was).

On with the review. First the bad:
     Sometimes the direction was a bit off, mostly with the background players who would be standing around aimlessly until suddenly moving, like someone off camera had just noticed they were doing nothing and ordered them to move. I like my background stuff to blend seamlessly or it takes me out of the moment. Every now and again the main characters seemed like the actors weren't entirely sure what they were supposed to be doing either. It didn't happen a lot, but the few times it did, it was noticable, and again it took me out of the moment.
     There were some tell-not-show moments, where one character would tell another character something, and I would be thinking "this is a movie, I would rather be seeing this happen than be hearing about it.
     The next three things are personal issues which may be issues only I have. Firstly, I was not entirely on board with the male love interest. He has that kind of face where he always looks like he's smirking arrogantly, and I just don't find that attractive or interesting.
     Secondly SPOILER they kill Michael Shanks's character far too early in the film for my liking.
     Thirdly, everytime they called Red by her name, Valerie, I got the Naya Rivera/Glee version of Valerie in my head, imagined the wolf doing a musical number and laughed to myself. This probably won't happen to any of you. Unless I put the song in your head before you see the movie, so I won't be alone in my insanity.

      Now for the good:
      It really was creepy and a little dark, just as I had been hoping.
      They did a good job keeping it hidden who the werewolf was. I didn't guess until just before it was revealed, and it really was a guess, N had said she thought it was someone, I said how I'd been thinking it was someone who had just been killed, so it wasn't them and then I was all, "oh maybe it's ..... because {my reason}, and i just happened to be right.
      There were some great action and death scenes. I'm not a girly girl, and I like a good bit of violence and gore in my movies.
      The scenery was gorgeous. Some of it was really, really breathtaking.
      All up I'd rate it about 3 stars out of 5.

     And because I'm sure you're all wondering, the cover art for MegaSnake