The good folk of Dagenham (checks notes)…sorry, Daggerhorn, have got a bit of a problem. Every month they leave a  goat sacrifice out for the local marauding werewolf. But wolfie has acquired the taste for human flesh and goat is strictly off the lyncanthrope menu. Village beauty Valerie (Seyfried) is gutted when her sister is too (ie gutted) and the villagers call upon crazed werewolf hunter Father Soloman (Oldman) to track down the creepy beastie for the sake of their goat supplies if nothing else. But Valerie, she of the red hood of the title, has got other problems apart from slaughtered sisters and that pesky goat shortage. She’s got the hots for two local lads – the darkly brooding Peter (Fernandez) and moneybags Henry (who she’s due to marry). One of them may have a secret, too…and it involves going all furry when there’s a full moon about.

Director Catherine Hardwicke effectively defanged vampires when she launched the Twilight saga a few years back and she’s done much the same here in this insipid, lifeless fairy tale which rarely springs to life and, courtesy of some genuinely bargain basement CGI, features probably the least terrifying werewolf in the history of cinema. Hardwick’s much more concerned with her dull, gooey-eyed young stars but their who-loves-who predicament engenders little interest or enthusiasm because the script gives them little to work and requires them to do little more than pout at one another. Fortunately there’s no-one here as miserable as the Twilight series’ Bella but there’s no-one with the undoubted smouldering charisma and star quality of Robert Pattison either. Only Gary Oldman’s looney tunes turn as Soloman manages to bring the movie to occasional life, Julie Christie is criminally wasted as Valerie’s Grandmother (what big teeth she has) and despite the stabbings and gougings it’s a bloodless affair with no real sense of danger and absolutely no sense of excitement.

Red Riding Hood is stylish and slick but it’s a hollow and soulless experience. Undiscerning teens impatient for the next chapter of the Twilight saga might find some entertainment value in this anodyne affair but anyone expecting the dark, Gothic scares the story suggests would be advised to look anywhere else.

Expected 5

Actual…

The good folk of Dagenham (checks notes)…sorry, Daggerhorn, have got a bit of a problem. Every month they leave a  goat sacrifice out for the local marauding werewolf. But wolfie has acquired the taste for human flesh and goat is strictly off the lyncanthrope menu. Village beauty Valerie (Seyfried) is gutted when her sister is too (ie gutted) and the villagers call upon crazed werewolf hunter Father Soloman (Oldman) to track down the creepy beastie for the sake of their goat supplies if nothing else. But Valerie, she of the red hood of the title, has got other problems apart from slaughtered sisters and that pesky goat shortage. She’s got the hots for two local lads – the darkly brooding Peter (Fernandez) and moneybags Henry (who she’s due to marry). One of them may have a secret, too…and it involves going all furry when there’s a full moon about.

Director Catherine Hardwicke effectively defanged vampires when she launched the Twilight saga a few years back and she’s done much the same here in this insipid, lifeless fairy tale which rarely springs to life and, courtesy of some genuinely bargain basement CGI, features probably the least terrifying werewolf in the history of cinema. Hardwick’s much more concerned with her dull, gooey-eyed young stars but their who-loves-who predicament engenders little interest or enthusiasm because the script gives them little to work and requires them to do little more than pout at one another. Fortunately there’s no-one here as miserable as the Twilight series’ Bella but there’s no-one with the undoubted smouldering charisma and star quality of Robert Pattison either. Only Gary Oldman’s looney tunes turn as Soloman manages to bring the movie to occasional life, Julie Christie is criminally wasted as Valerie’s Grandmother (what big teeth she has) and despite the stabbings and gougings it’s a bloodless affair with no real sense of danger and absolutely no sense of excitement.

Red Riding Hood is stylish and slick but it’s a hollow and soulless experience. Undiscerning teens impatient for the next chapter of the Twilight saga might find some entertainment value in this anodyne affair but anyone expecting the dark, Gothic scares the story suggests would be advised to look anywhere else.

Expected 5

Actual…

Zack Snyder is not one to shy away from big, action packed and visually stunning films. 300 and Watchmen are two such films. But with his new film, Sucker Punch, Snyder seems to have gone too far. By trying to go it alone, doing the writing, producing and directing, he missed out elements that are needed to make a film stand on its own two feet.

Sucker Punch follows the story of Baby Doll (Browning), who is locked in a mental house and then forced to dance and perform other services at the hands of paying men. With the help of Sweat Pea (Cornish), Rocket (Malone), Blondie (Hudgens) and Amber (Chung), she seeks to escape from her prison before the high roller arrives in just five short days.

Baby Doll soon discovers that when she dances she escapes into her own world where anything is possible and finds her guardian angel is there to protect and guide her. When dancing, anyone who is watching becomes completely distracted allowing the other girls to steal the items they need to escape.

Before going to see this film you know it is going to be far fetched and unrealistic, but the film still goes too far and so many bits just don’t make sense. There are so many visually mesmerising fight scenes involving dragons, robots, 20 foot ninjas and Nazis but inbetween, there is nothing holding it together. It seems to be fantasy after fantasy, straight out of the head of a teenage boy.

The girls’ attire, apart from making them look stupidly good, didn’t really have a place in the film. I can understand that while dancing, they would be dressed as they are, but when Baby Doll enters her own imagination, she has no reason to continue to dress in the same way, and the others certainly don’t.

This film could have been the big break for all the girls involved but as there is little opportunity to show off any acting chops, the opportunity (unfortunately) appears to have passed them by. I wonder just how much time they spent not in front of a green screen. You have to give it to Snyder though, he does know how to make a fight scene gripping. The distinct lack of cuts during the action really kept you locked into the scenes, making you feel a lot more involved, like you could actually be there.

There is talk that some scenes that helped hold the story together, had to be taken out because the film certificate board didn’t agree with them. If a director’s cut is released, that may be a step in the right direction, helping bridge the gaps.

Until that happens, Sucker Punch is just an adrenalin shot, put together for adolescent males who want to see nothing more than barely dressed girls fighting with everything and anything.

Expected rating  8
Actual…

Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) has returned to the town of Woodsborough, where she is promoting her new book.  And where Sidney goes, you can bet trouble won’t be far behind.  For it doesn’t take long before Ghostface, the stalker who fifteen years earlier changed Sidney’s life for the worse, and literally left the town’s population in pieces, slashes his way onto the scene again.

Investigating the new mayhem is Dewey (David Arquette), who despite having been promoted to Sheriff, seems no less dippy. He is now married to Gale (Courteney Cox), the reporter who was previously the bane of his life, and who has now taken time out from her journalistic career to write her first book. But once a reporter always a reporter, and when the murders start again she sees Dewey as her fast track to the scoop of the century.  So with the scene set let the blood fest begin!

Except that it doesn’t. For Scream 4 is really nothing more than a pale imitation of itself. You know you’re in trouble when half way through, a film begins to parody its earlier instalments – which it did much better the first time round. Where the original Scream shocked you by its sheer originality – who before Craven had had the audacity to kill one of the main billed stars before the opening credits (even Psycho gave Janet Leigh twenty minutes before Tony Perkins got to work with his knife), this fourth (and hopefully last) instalment leaves you feeling that you have seen it all before.

My brief synopsis of the film may appear just that, brief. I’d love to be able to say something sharp and cutting, but there really is nothing to add. The best part was spotting the references to other movies (watch out for Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Omen, Suspiria and the original Scream), and a fleeting reference to the Lord of Horror himself, Christopher Lee. However as so many of these films, and Sir Christopher, are old school horror, I suspect much of the fun derived from this will be lost on the nubile audience to which the Scream franchise is aimed. The kids watching the film may know the ‘star’ names who appear in the now obligatory pre-title slash-a-thon, but they were lost on me (though this is probably saying more about my age, than any weaknesses on the film’s part).

As so often happens when you are eagerly looking forward to something, by the time it actually arrives you inevitably feel letdown. The actual result never quite lives up to the anticipation, and you are often disappointed. As a result I suppose I’ve only myself to blame where Scream 4 is concerned – I should have known better. As should have Craven and the residents of Woodsborough. Let’s hope that they now have the sense to pack up and leave this blunt franchise, and never return.

Expected rating  8
Actual…