PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*
These two films play upon the mythology of the “Red Riding Hood” folktale, though the treatments are as far apart as mountain and valley.
“Werewolf hunters” don’t have as detailed a lineage in the cinema as “vampire hunters.” Still, the basic idea of RED: WEREWOLF HUNTER could have been a worthy addition to the former pack. RED’s titular heroine is a member of a family of werewolf hunters, introduced to the viewer by a sound narrative device: Red falls in love with a young outsider. She brings him to her woodsy home with the intention of telling her all about herself and her family’s anti-werewolf crusade. Unfortunately for Red, there’s a new werewolf in town. Unlike others of his breed he possesses the power to change at will, rather than being subject to the moon’s phases. He uses that power to gather a cult of his fellow shape-changers.
Unfortunately, though RED is set up to promise kickass thrills, neither the FX nor the fight-choreography is ever more than pedestrian. This might have been forgivable had the script done anything interesting with the relationship between Red, Red’s family, and her outsider-boyfriend. But none of the heroes are given more than cursory characterization. Early in the story the boyfriend is bitten by the werewolf, which exacerbates the family’s hostility to him as an outsider. But the script doesn’t do anything with the conflict, though Red’s mother tells a tragic story of losing her husband to werewolf-ism. The overall story is perhaps a little better than the average Syfy-Channel film, but not by much.
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