a long (and kinda pointless) review by the Azure-Winged Magpie.
WARNING: MAGPIE CHATTER / NSFW LANGUAGE SHALL BE USED
Don’t you say I didn’t warn you!
Note: I originally started to write this post a few months ago. Since I’m back to The Corvid Review full-time now, I might as well finish this nasty business.
And before I begin: yep. Ain’t none of you done heard of this film. As a matter of fact, I only found this one one night during a drunken session of watching my usual blend of horror bits online. And I found this. And… wow. Just wow.
The Crow is a veteran of terrible films, and he’s pretty tough. But when I made him sit down for this one, he went from this to this. (◔◡◔✿)
Remember that other film no one had heard of but I went over in incredible detail just because of how crap it was? This review’s going to be similar to that one, but for a VERY different kind of film.
Anyway. Let’s cut the chatter. Let’s take a look at:
WHO’S READ LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD?
OPENING THOUGHTS
Now, while we’re going over the entries to our official Call for Submissions (limited pool!), and since I’ve been on a bit of ‘holiday’ from TCR with the Crow (visit the Northern bits of Scotland, folks! The place is amazing!), I’ve been at a bit of a loss for what I should post in the interim. But hey! What’s this?! A Little Red Riding Hood film from 2015?! Why ain’t I ever heard of this?! And it’s horror?!
Sign me up!
(^◡^✿)!
And it stars people no one knows, and is made by some dude named Rene Perez (working for Idic Entertainment — that name is important, I’ll explain why later), who proudly tells us within the first few minutes that he’s the director/editor/cinematographer on the production.
This could be a real unknown gem, couldn’t it? This could be one of those films that just blows me away, even though it’s just a low-budget job from who-knows-where.
So, all excited (the alcohol might’ve had something to do with it), I gave it a watch!
And…
Y’know what? I don’t think I can come up with a face to describe what I think about this film.
Fuck this. Let’s just get this over with…
WHAT BIG ADVENTURES YOU HAVE!
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ALL THE SPOILERS
Note: A tl;dr is included at the end.
Right. So like we all know: Little Red Riding Hood (Irina Levadneva/Iren Levy, who’s not little at all here, but is a bit of a bae IRL) is heading to her nan’s through the forest with some medicine. Inter-cut with close ups of a spider sitting in the middle of its web, this happens for a long 2 minutes while we’re introduced to the people involved in the film. And the longest credit of them all? Director/cinematographer/editor Rene Perez!
And she’s stopped by ‘Sir Knight’. This obviously-zombied goof wearing a rubber helmet (accuracy!) who tells her something like “DO NOT GO-HO-HO-OO IN THA-HA-AT DIRECTION!”, after which we’re immediately introduced to the fact that this film’s lead is incapable of line delivery (which is a shame, since… this exists I really need to re-think not going lesbianz, sometimes…
You see… she’s “YOUNG” and “PURE”. And “IT WILL FIND [HER]”. It will… well, something. You get the idea, don’t you?
Anyway… So she gets spooked by Sir Knight’s warnings and legs it (even though maybe listening a little more or even asking a few questions might’ve been a good idea), after which Sir Knight takes off his ‘helmet’ (rubber) to show us the mask (rubber) he’s wearing underneath (These masks look like they were good value for money, to be fair, they probably paid only a few bucks apiece).
So, while she’s legging it for pretty much no reason, she ends up assaulted by what look like some really bad After Effects filters. The Crow and I are kinda know (and are pretty good with) the software. And by Bob the holy Builder… this shit is amateur as fuck. What was that special effects dude’s name, again?
Oh, wait… who’s the director/editor/cinematographer of this film?! Rene -fucking!- Perez. That’s who. I’m laying this one down on his noddle 100%.
Anyway… she runs a little more. Sir Knight just kind of shrivels up after proving his helmet is made of rubber and returns to his man-cave (and I mean that literally). And that’s the last we see of him.
And THEN! We meet THIS DICKHEAD!
…!
(⊙︿⊙✿)?!
I mean… that’s a literal dickhead. And a repeat dickhead, at that. That’s a multi-super-extra-powerful dickhead!
Or are those spikes? Or fingers? I really don’t care. This dude looks hilarious as fuck from all angles. I mean, seriously… WHAT?
And then, we get to the biggest chunk of dialogue in the film: growling. I’m not shitting you… half of this film is guys (and one grill) in rubber masks and/or suits growling at each other. And while we ALL get what they’re really saying, some of the scenes are so badly done that you have to look back on them to make sense of them (the one with the grill-creature, for example).
Anyway… Dickhead goes and finds one of his minions. And GUESS WHO IT IS?!
Ohhh bae! That’s right! It’s the BIG BAD WOLF! THE NAN-NOMMING, BIG-TEETH-HAVING MVP OF THIS HERE MO-[REDACTED]-ING STORY!
After he has a growling match with Dickhead up there (who’s his boss, apparently), he’s UNLEASHED! (after stepping past some AE filters), to go after Middle-aged Red Riding HoodCloak!
Now, here’s where I’m gonna point something out about the film:
This film has no idea about HOW sound should be used. I mean, there’s a track for Dickhead, there’s a track for Middle-aged Red Riding Cloak, and there’s this basic music in the background. And they’re NOT mixed. They literally just resume playing from where they were paused with each cut.
It was bothering me, but it really didn’t hit home until the chase scene. We cut between the chase and Dickhead climbing some stairs for a good long while (this must’ve been the only staircase they could film for the closer shots, far as I can see). And the whole music thing becomes as subtle as a crack-whore in a nunnery Oh, wait…
Anyway… we cut between multi-Dickhead climbing some stairs and some lame chasing scenes for some time. I nearly fell asleep during the chase — and I’m not kidding at that. When I’m half-cut and watching a film, I usually go super-power(!) Magpie, but this one kind of drained away at me. It’s really just that badly-done.
It’s like the opposite of a Roadrunner(beep-beep!) short. Everything moves at the speed of a stoned snail and TBBW nearly loses his rubber head at one point before being thwarted by a tree.
(ಠ ︿ ಠ✿)!
A.fucking.tree…
Let me say that again: a.FUCKING.TREE!
And just because I’m picking on this film so much, let’s take a Magpie-magnified peek at what Middle-age Red Riding Cloak is ferrying to her ill nan, shall we?
When she goes on her face during the chase, this is what spills out of her basket:
A bottle bought from Etsy and a lime.
ONE.LIME… ONE.FUCKING.LIME.
ONE.MOTHERFUCKING.LIME.
(ಠ _ ಠ✿)
Nan’s gonna be sooo proud of her Middle-aged Red Riding-cloaked tot, ain’t she?! Did the director/editor even care?! Couldn’t they have just shopped around and got a few more fruits or some shit to stuff into her little basket?!
AAARGH!
Anyway, MARRC comes across Dickhead’s castle and makes like the Roadrunnerbeep-beep! into it. The After Effects filters go up again and Wolfie stops his chase. MARRC somehow appears on the ramparts of the castle (somehow), and watches Wolfie amble off into the woods.
Ahhh! So THIS is how Sir Knight got out (more on that later)!
And then… GUESS WHAT?!
C’mon… guess! Guess! You can do it! Guess!
THAT’S RIGHT! We cut to some completely-related (and I mean that!) bimbo in the middle of the “deepest, darkest forest”! In our time. Cameras and cars and all. (Wtf?!)
THIS is what we were waiting for, no? NO?!
So, this bint is on a mission to go into the “deepest, darkest corners of the forest” and “shoot locations never shot before” (I probably mangled that last quote, but fuck it). She’s speaking into her camera for when she gets a signal. And she does this twice (like doing it in one go wouldn’t have sufficed). She stutters and struggles to remember her lines. This film was probably at one point crowd-funded, since she delivers a shoutout to her followers on her … her … “KickStarter”! (Don’t worry. She stumbled too.)
She also tells us her name is Carol Marcus (…!) and at one point tells her ‘fans’ to…
“Live Long And Prosper”
… (ಠ o ಠ✿) …?!
Hooo boy!
Remember I said I’d go back to “IDIC Entertainment” up top?! Well, here we are!
THESE MUPPETS ARE MOTHERFUCKING TREKKIES!
I’ve never felt so insulted in my life…
IDIC = Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. These bleeding sods’ IDIC probably stands for: Idiotic Dickheads’ Incompetency in Cinema. No wait. It definitely does.
Anyway… we follow Bint Bimbo-head (as I’m going to call her, ‘cos I can) around while we’re made to realise that Dickhead’s still around. He growls at one of his minions and she/it goes out for a stroll. Bimbo-head’s car goes BOOM! after being sparkled-up by some more crappy AE filters and effects.
I mean, they even had a credit for their visual arts guy. This guy needs to exile himself to school and never come out until he’s learnt to actually fucking composite effects properly into video. I mean, the lot of us are self-taught and we do far better jobs. And I’m a-tootin’ that horn until I see this dickhead do a decent job (not that I think he’s ever going to be allowed to work again).
And oh, yeah… it gets worse as time goes on…
I’m actually watching a crappy film as I type this, and while it’s another bag of dicks, and it hurts me to type this… it actually has some better effects than this pot of loo soup.
So anyway, her car’s gone BOOM, and she wanders around the “deepest, darkest” forest with nothing but her camera (I hope she remembered to bring her best friend! a.k.a.: Bear mace).
And in the middle of this “deepest, darkest” forest, guess what she comes across?!
C’mon… you know you want to! What’s she been lured into?! What devilish plans could be going around?!
(✿ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Awww yeah! All of Dickhead’s supernatural spooky-dooky antics are about bringing chicks back to his, is it?! IS IT?! Sounds like it, don’t it?
Some people around here would know all about being the victim of that sort of thing… MUAHAHA! Love you!
Anyway, I’m going to leave Bint aside for now. Let’s get back to MARRC and Young-Dickhead and the castle and all that (and let’s see if things actually pick up on that front). But first! Let’s have a giggle over this stupid screen I managed to grab of Bint Bimbo-head’s face.
So, MARRC wanders the castle. She speaks out loud and clear that she’s “NOT AN INTRUDER!” and that she’s only here because Wolfie made her leg it in (Bimbo-head says something similar on getting into Dickhead’s house). The film drops some really vague religious-sounding lines. See, MARRC’s figured out that this castle is a ‘place of evil‘ and that she needs out. Now.
And after the director/editor/cinematographer shows us a good few yawn-inducing minutes of her just kinda ambling ’round (except for this one staircase, for no good reason) until she comes up to a big gate. She jabbers through it and Dickhead (who’s on the other side) growls at her, spooking her with a crappy AE skull (?!) and getting her to leg it back down to the hall she was praying (or whatever) in.
Dickhead comes out, makes sure she’s fucked off, and shuts the gate again.
Oookay… that was… kinda pointless. No?
And then… just when this film was about to send me into happy-drunken-ZZZ-time, we get our first actual exchange of fucking dialogue! It’s wayyy too far into the film to make anyone really sit around waiting for it, but hey, at least we get something.
And it’s this wanker who starts us off:
Okay, so here are the facts ’cause I can’t be arsed to make fancy of their dialogue:
- The Master (Dickhead) keeps people in his castle and doesn’t let them out
- He keeps them for the same reason that “people keep pigs” (ie: bacon)
- Contrary to MARRC’s initial fears, Dickhead ain’t no fucking cannibal
- He feeds on people’s “suffering (and/or fears)” because this shit ain’t ‘so simple’
- He’ll send creatures after her (that’s why poor Wolfie was locked up!) to torture her
- He’s from this world… He’s “one of the ancients… possibly the last” (WTF does this even mean?!)
- “The rest of his kind were died when the oceans swallowed Atlantis” (u WOT m8?!)
- The monk’s survived by hiding
- Killing Dickhead is the o”nly way out”
Anyway, monk-dude hears a growl and legs it. Up there is pretty much ALL the story we get outside of MARRC and Bint’s wandering about and all the growling.
In case you’re asking: No, Wolfie doesn’t show up again in this film. And when I said I’d touch on Sir Knight? I’m guessing it means Sir Knight used to be one of the tormentors Dickhead employed. There are other minor bits and bobs, but don’t fucking bother. They’re not really that fucking important.
We don’t go into these “ancients” or “Atlantis” or anything either.
Now listen, Rene… LEAVE THIS RANDOM, POINTLESS SHIT OUT OF YOUR DUMB FUCKING FILM. IT SURE AS FUCK AIN’T GONNA SAVE IT.
So, now we cut to a THIRD storyline. It starts off with a cringy-as-all-fuck intro, and BAM! We meet the Knight (I mean, give someone apart from the Bint a NAME, please!) and immediately, he bags an eyeful of some bewbz (not-pictured up above. You’ll need my special Magpie-password to have your ACCESS GRANTED).
Now, on a side note… man’s not actually bad-looking (sorry, Crow!), but anyway: back to the plot. I’m beginning to feel this might be FINALLY going somewhere…
So he treks (hah) up to Bewbz (she ain’t got a name, so I get to name her) and while she puts her clothes back on, he’s interested in making a bit o’ the ol’ beast with two backs. I mean… wait. WHAT?! I’m always down for a bit of screen-nookie, but can this film please start moving somewhere?! Preferably in a forward direction…
So, she’s totally dtf, and leads him on a chase (how old are these people?!) up to the castle. Knight’s brains are certainly located in his special place, since it points (lololol how fucking old am I?!) him straight in through the doors and past the AE filters.
At the same time, MARRC is still wandering through the castle. When she stops for a little cry, she’s eyeballed by one of the monsters Dickhead’s growled into stalking her. So, here’s what’s going on: Knight is chasing Bewbz for a bit of the ol’ in-n-out, and Eyeless (the monster carries an eyeball, probably Monk-dude’s, since he ain’t got one eye) is chasing MARRC for a bit of the ol’ ‘interrogating’.
MARRC gets grabbed by Eyeless, and after a brief struggle, Eyeless for some reason pops one of her boobies out. I mean… did we really need that shit? I get that it adds to the whole “suffering” shtick, but… I’m getting some serious bad vibes from this film crew.
I watched another one of their flicks right after finishing this one. (Fun story: when attempting to make the Crow watch it, it turned out that he once vaguely knew someone who had a hand in it.) And armed with more to go on than Little Red Riding Hood, I have concerns about this team’s ‘lech-factor’. I’ll get around to that film next, so my point will be made clear soon.
So, MARRC is being molested by this creature (for lack of a better word), and she starts leaking this black fluid kinda thing which drifts up to Dickhead so he can pretend like he’s eating it. This isn’t the first time we see this effect, and it’s laughably bad through the entire length of the flick.
Monk-dude comes in to save MARRC, and in a sequence in which all dialogue and on-location noise is drained out, he gets smacked upside the head and killed straight-up.
So long, and thanks for all the exposition!
BUT! MARRC’s legged it (and readjusted her dress). She runs into Knight, who’s been blue-balled by finding out Bewbz is really a withery, rubber-masked crone, and not the hawt bae he thought he’d be getting his leg over with.
Aaand, with a swing of the sword! We have a team up!
Right, so we finally hear Knight speak. And…
…
(TワT✿)
Oh.MY.FUCKING.GOD.
I need the Crow on this, pronto! Pleasepleaseplease! I need a clip of this shit!
Fuck it. I found the whole damn movie on YouTube (not linking to it — your braincellz will thx me, k?). Here’s the…
CLIP!Thx, ytcropper!
Do you hear that?! DO YOU HEAR THAT?! This guy’s lips don’t even match up with what he’s saying. Like… never. There are multiple scenes between MARRC and the Knight where lips are moving, but ain’t nothing coming out. At least MARRC retains some of her actual voicework, but the Knight? Dayumn!
That voice-over just made this film for me on the night I was watching it. All of a sudden, I’ve gone from bored to happy (because bewbs) to complete hysterics. And this voice, combined with the dumb-as-rocks dialogue, stays for the rest of the whole film. And it just.gets.WORSE!
So, after some bickering over staying v leaving, and a hilarious escape attempt, MARRC convinces the Knight to help her kill Dickhead.
But just look at what he replies “Yes” to.
(TワT✿)
But whoa… What about Bint?!
Well, after a brief spooky sighting of Zombie-Bewbz (she’s still around!) and some completely pointless set-ups for scares, she makes herself sorta comfy in Dickhead’s future house. She’s worried about who the house belongs to and how they’ll react when they get home in case she goes nap-nap.
I mean, this is the good ol’ US-of-A. So… I don’t blame her for being scared of getting made into a lead-chip cookie.
And she’s so alone in this big, spacious, well-lit house that she’s talking into her camera again, is how we know these things.
Right. Let’s take a closer look!
Keep your eyes on the globe to the left of the screencap. Got it? Good. Keep your eyes on it and scroll down slowly…
Veeery slowly…
…
…
…
Keep going.
Aaand Crow… ENHANCE!
…
LOOK WHO IT IS!!!1!11!!1
And what does he do?! What does he do?! What does this all-powerful magic dickhead do when he’s got the drop on Bint?!
Let’s see… is he gonna… I dunno… jump in front of her and go BOO?! Is he gonna… make something go BUMP?! Is he gonna… make spooky noises from his HOLE?!
Oh, waitwaitwait… he’s about to do something!
Uhhh. Where the fuck is he going?!
Anyway… he lets Bint sleep it off a bit (‘coz he’s nice, I guess?) and just kinda mopes around the place with his dick-stick.
(✿ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Whaaat? I’m bored. This film’s fucking shit.
Okay. You know what? Even I can’t keep this up. Let me run through this.
Bint finds the ol’ “ooOoHh! sOmeoNE tOoK PhoTOz oF U on uR pHoNe!” shebang. She spooks. Runs into dickhead. Gets chased around a bit like the useless bimbo she is. She gets nabbed after some pathetic-fucking-floppy excuses for chase scenes and…
she dies.
U WOT?!
(> o <✿) …?!
WHY IS THIS IN THE FUCKING FILM YOU BUTTHOLES?!
SHE WAS LITERALLY IN IT FOR NO FUCKING REASON!
Fuck’s sake.
Anyways…
The horny knight and MARRC team up. They have some pointless fucking discussions about god n shit and MARRC turns out to be a complete doofus. The only highlights here are the horny knight’s few lines of bad dubbing.
They spring a trap on Dickhead and have a bag CGI-fight with him (with bad CG blood and everything). It’s… bad. The BIGSTRONG (horny) knight doesn’t even get close to Dickhead, and is about to get smoked by him until MARRC saves the day.
And they get back to ol’ nan. No dialogue or nothing. They just go back on their way.
But wait… there’s a jumpscare!(?) Right at the end, we see…
DICKHEAD!
But wait. Waitwaitwait. We know he’s alive because he smokes Bint some hundreds of years from now. So… ehhh… what was the point of this whole thing?
I mean. What’s the point of anything that just happened?
That’s it. I found it. This is the worst film I’ve ever watched so far.
Fuck this shit.
TL;DR
So, when posting to /r/horrorreviewed on Reddit, I summarised this film in a much better way. Here’s the tl;dr:
This one is really, REALLY bad. Seriously, steer clear of this rubbish.
Little Red Riding Hood (who’s more like Middle-Aged Red Riding Cloak, or MARRC for short, here) is going to her nan’s like in the original story. There is a rubber-masked knight who warns her from going any further because apparently she’s never in her life noticed the GIANT CASTLE along the way. We meet a random monster-dude in the form of a rubber-masked man with dildos on his head who’s for some reason the REAL villain here. He sets the Big Bad Wolf onto MARRC and has her chased into the castle.
From there the film just gets stupider and boring-er. There are long takes of MARRC just sort of wandering about and getting all spooked. There are random infodumps out of which only ONE point is relevant to the story. There’s a completely unnecessary “future” timeline for some reason. The wolf goes and fucks right off from the set. Random monsters show up. A knight with hilariously bad ADR is involved. And we get random boobies for you-know-why.
It’s just BAD.
Seriously, avoid this film like the plague. But read my original writeup! I wasted wayyy too long of my life on it and it’d all be a drunken waste otherwise (or I’ll set dildo-head on you).
CLOSING THOUGHTS
F M L
I really know how to waste some fucking hours, don’t I?
Stone me dead. This was bad. And guess what? I got another film by this fucking team to get through by the end of this month.
Someone fucking call the loonie bin.
— Magpie up up and… (oh fuck it. I’m off for a kip.)
T H E _ C O R V I D _ R E V I E W 
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