90 Minutes in 300 Pages: Red Riding Hood
Article by Ed O.
Welcome back to “90 Minutes in 300 Pages” where one guy with an attention span too short to watch a movie reads it instead. There’s snow on the ground and romance in the air, so I, your humble Book Kaiju, present to you a special Valentine’s Day Review! The early 2010s were filled with teen supernatural romances that were striving to capture a fraction of that Twilight money. There were vampire romances, werewolf boyfriends, angel lovers, and zombie paramours galore on every bookshelf and on the silver screen. At the same time there was a boom of gritty, “historical” reimagining of classic fairy tales/folklore (Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters and King Arthur). Those powers combined in the form of today’s subject, 2011’s Red Riding Hood.
This film was helmed by Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke and produced by Leonardo Di-FREAKING-Caprio with a script by David Leslie Johnson. Unlike many movies we’ve talked about here, the novelization was always planned as a cornerstone of the film. The author was handpicked by Hardwicke to write a novel that contained all the characterization and backstory that was apparently chewed up by Gary Oldman’s acting
Who’s the author? Well, according to the novelization intro, Sarah Blakley-Cartwight was 13 years old when she met Catharine Harwicke, and was handpicked by Harwicke to write the novelization. This would be her first novel, and according to Goodreads, her only novel published between her graduation in 2011 and her follow up published in 2023.
See, nepotism hurts everyone!
Eh, I’m sure it can’t be that bad, right? RIGHT?!
*Sigh*
So, what’s Red Riding Hood about?
We open in a dark forest. What forest? Oh readers, we are never told exactly where this story takes place, but I have enough red string and a cork board to have some theories.
We meet our main character, Valerie, up in a tree. She’s only seven years old and she’s already not like other girls. She’s always getting in trouble and prefers to be in the woods with Grandmother instead of the village. Why can’t she be more like her older sister, Lucie?
But she’s got more concerns than just not fitting in, because tonight is a full moon! That means the Wolf is going to be out prowling and wouldn’t you know it it’s her family’s turn to offer up a sacrificial animal. The only thing they have to sacrifice is their pet goat! Oh no!
That night as she’s lying in bed, Val decides she’s got to do something about that goat. So she sneaks off to the sacrificial altar and tries to free her beloved friend. Then suddenly, the Wolf attacks! Thankfully, the Wolf would rather have mutton than human, but Val is shook! The Wolf is real!
Whoa now, that was a little too exciting. Sorry everyone, don’t mean for you to get scared at the Big Bad Wolf. Let’s jump ahead ten years so we can talk about something far more important: Boys!
Yep, I hope you got enough werewolf excitement in that prologue, because it’s going to have to last you for about a hundred pages.
Instead, we find present day Valerie complaining about how her sister is still the bestest and her friends are scheming on how to get some one-on-one time with some of those strapping fieldhands that the Reeve is bringing to help with the harvest.
Cue the harvesting montage!
This movie can’t be a true romantasy without a love triangle, so here we are introduced to the love “interests.” I really don’t want to use “love interest” because that implies that they might actually be interesting. These two boys are as bland as a Wonder Bread sandwich. We have Henry, the son of the local blacksmith and is rich. That’s his personality: the Rich one.
Then, amongst the hired workers is Peter. Who’s Peter? He’s the bad boy (read jerk who is supposed to be charming) childhood friend. No one else likes him because his father was a con artist who accidentally killed Henry’s mom! The drama!
Yeah, this love triangle is not very engaging. Val is never torn between the two at all. She immediately wants to blow Peter’s house down. Even her arranged marriage with Henry is brushed aside in just a few chapters when Henry freely ends the engagement.
Honestly, Peter and Henry have more chemistry with each other than they do with Val. They hate each other because of the entire “you killed my mom” and “you’re engaged to the girl I love” thing, but they also must work together. There’s lots of heated arguing and chest thumping. I’m just saying, if this was written ten years later, this would be an enemies to lovers plot. Instead, we just get this half-hearted love triangle and need to rely on AO3 for the good stuff. Allegedly.
Where was I?
After the harvest, they all camp out in the forest for…reasons. The girls want some alone time with the boys, so they do what any teenager would do: roofie the responsible adult! The girls hang out with the boys and Peter and Val catch up, wink wink, nudge nudge.
Sadly, the party comes to an end when suddenly they realize the moon is full! But that’s impossible, because the full moon was a few nights ago! Ah, but you see this is the rare phenomenon known as a Blood Moon!
What’s a Blood Moon? It’s when the moon is full for an entire week and is red as blood. Somewhere an astronomer is crying, but honestly, I get it. In real life there’s only one full moon a month which really deflates the danger and action of a werewolf movie.
The next morning a victim of the Wolf is found, Val’s sister Lucie. Finally a plot!
This senseless murder is just too much for the townsfolk, so they grab their pitchforks and form a mob on their own. They are led by the Reeve and Henry’s father, who is revealed through a rather random exposition dump, was the true love of Val’s mom’s life before she married the drunken woodsman, Cesaire.
The mob goes to where they believe the werewolf lives. You can tell because it’s creepy and there’s a lot of bones. They bravely search the caves, but are soon divided because of the maze-like nature of the tunnels. Henry’s dad is attacked by the Wolf, but the Reeve slices the wolf’s head off thus ending the story here. Yay!
Wait… No, why are there still two hundred pages left?! WHY?!
Sigh…
Back in the village a strange cart arrives. It is Father Solomon, the werewolf hunter, and his band of diverse soldiers of God. Solomon tells the people that they have a werewolf, which apparently comes as a surprise to everyone, and that the Reeve killed the wrong animal. He then introduces the village to his daughters (a CATHOLIC PRIEST has daughters?!) and sends them to the inn. He then regales the village with how he became a werewolf hunter by killing his own wife who was secretly a werewolf.
But please don’t tell his daughters that! It’s a secret, he loudly announces to the entire community that his daughters are now in. While they’re riding away in a cart with open windows… Come on, man.
At this point the story really tries to play up the paranoia and the hysteria that comes from the fact that one of these neighbors is secretly a monster. Anyone could be the werewolf in human form! The narrative makes a half-hearted attempt to paint three possible suspects: Peter (the broody bad boy), Henry (the nice, rich boy), and Granny (who would be a fun twist on the Red Riding Hood story, so you know it’s not her).
The Reeve doesn’t believe Solomon and does truly believe the Wolf is dead. And everyone knows the best way to celebrate the slaying of a wolf is to have an orgy party! Basically, think Ren Faire on half-priced mead day.
The Wolf obviously attacks the party just when Val and Peter start to get all hot and bothered. Interestingly, the Wolf shows a particular interest in Val. It can actually talk to her and reveals that it wants to turn her into a werewolf too. All it would take is a bite under the Blood Moon, yet for dramatic reasons the Wolf doesn’t bite her and end our story with a double werewolf rampage killing all the stupid villagers. Instead, it runs away.
Father Solomon is convinced that Val is a witch because of the whole “talked to the werewolf” thing. Since this is a world where werewolves are real, this feels like a fair assumption. This leads to Val being tied up and used as bait for the Wolf. Surprisingly, this might have actually worked if Peter and Henry didn’t “rescue” Val by burning the entire village down. Solomon is ultimately murdered by his own captain after he was bitten by the Wolf. After all, a man that is bitten under the Blood Moon is cursed to become a werewolf.
We’re nearing the end of the book and the author just realized we’ve really done nothing with the Red Riding Hood fairytale, so Val becomes convinced that her Grandmother is either in danger or is the monster. While on her way to Grandmother’s house Peter stops her, but since the narrative is really trying to lean into the mystery of who the werewolf is, instead of saying “Hey, I love you and let’s work together” he acts like a jerk and she runs away.
The End.
Wait… That can’t be right…
Okay, let’s talk about why this movie novelization is infamous. The filmmakers were convinced that the mystery of who the Wolf was is the greatest twist in all of cinema. That twist is what people would be talking about. It’s what would drive people to go see it and discover the answer themselves. Everyone will be saying, “I see wolf people.” For some reason the marketing centered on the discovery of who amongst the cast was actually a monster in disguise. Yeah, the success of this Twilight-wannabe hinged not on which cardboard cutout boy the lead would end up with.
That means the movie novelization had a major problem: It couldn’t spoil the twist. Movie novelizations often come out weeks, if not months, before the film they are based on arrives in theaters. If moviegoers read this book, then they would know who the Wolf actually was. We can’t have that! (Okay, but they’re seriously worried about all 12 people who read movie novels finding this ending?)
Their solution? Cut out the final chapter. Yep, when you turn to the last page of Red Riding Hood you get the message: Is this the end of Valerie’s story? Visit www.redridinghoodmovie.com to find out!
The problem? That website is defunct. Deader than Catherine Hardwicke’s directing career. And like, it didn’t even last that long. The Blood Moon lasted longer than this website existed.
Worse, they were selling this book on Amazon well after the website with the final chapter was taken down! Plus, the final chapter is a terribly formatted PDF. Thankfully, nothing on the internet truly dies, (my Xanga still haunts me to this day), so you can find the chapter with a bit of sleuthing, but still. What a cheap and lame gimmick.
Also, the twist isn’t even that good! It’s not foreshadowed well. And it feels really rushed too, probably because it had to all fit into one chapter so they could cut it. What a terrible choice.
I’m so annoyed I’m not even going to talk about what happens. No wait, I’m so annoyed I’m just going to spoil it instead. It was Val’s Dad. There! Take that you fourteen year old movie!
*****Is this end of the Book Kaiju’s review? Visit kaijuandgnome.substack.com (or just keep scrolling) to find out!*****
The Good:
Um… It had a werewolf in it and I like werewolves?
The Bad:
This book is confusing. Not in a “there’s so many twists and turns I don’t know what’s going on” confusing. The blocking on the scenes just doesn't feel right. The action scenes feel muddled and the flow just seems off. I honestly had trouble figuring out what happened.
It’s obvious this book was inspired by Twilight (it even had the same movie director!). Yet, it fails to capitalize on the romance aspects that made the Twilight series so popular. There’s never going to be a “Team Peter or Team Henry” meme. These boys are boring, and it’s clear from the very beginning that Peter/Val is the OTP, even though Peter acts like a jerk through the entire book. (Narwhal Note: Umm… it’s because Peter acts like a jerk that we know they’re OTP. Henry is too nice. We can’t have a nice, stable, normal guy as the one she ends up with. It’s like you don’t even read romantasy)
Also, this book wants to have a message. The point of the books seems to be that paranoia and witch hunts are dangerous and will tear even the closest knit community apart. It focuses on the evils of blind fanaticism and how that can lead to horrendous atrocities. Which fair. I agree with all of that.
Except this is a world where there is an actual factual werewolf in the community! Maybe paranoia is a little warranted? I don’t agree with his methods, but Solomon makes sense.
What's Different:
Honestly, this novelization is pretty faithful. It follows beat for beat the movie… Except that about a hundred pages of it is completely unique.
Yeah, that’s right. The movie begins on page ninety-four of my version of the novelization. All that backstory of Peter having to run away from the village, Henry’s gripe with Peter for the whole “you killed my mom” thing, and the pages and pages about harvesting? Not in the movie! The movie starts with Lucie dying, which is wild. I’ve read a lot of novelizations at this point, but never one that had so much new information.
I should have seen this coming. In the introduction Hardwicke mentioned that she wanted a novelization to fill in the gaps and history that they just couldn’t film. I was expecting a moment or two of exposition, not ninety pages!
And if you’re wondering, wait, if they cut out all this backstory doesn’t that undermine the motivations and character arcs of everyone in the movie? YUP! The movie becomes nonsensical without the added information that this novel adds. To really make sense of the story, you need to hunt this out of print book down, go and download a hard to find copy of the final chapter, and then read the bloody thing! A dumb supernatural romance teen movie shouldn’t require this much homework!
So should you read it?
No. Just no.
It’s a mess of a story. The book really wants to be Twilight, but fails on every attempt. The love triangle is lame. The mystery is dumb. The message is messy. Plus, it’s just not written well. It doesn’t understand how to be a supernatural romance or how to be a werewolf horror movie.
Oh, and don’t forget you don't even get the ending!
Save your time and just watch one of the other million Twilight rip-offs that came out in the 2010s. Surely they’re better than this, because they can’t be worse.