My quick rating – 4.0/10. Fair warning. Red Riding starts off depressing enough to make you wonder if somebody accidentally loaded the wrong movie file before eventually remembering there’s supposed to be a horror angle. Teenager Red Riding (Victoria Tait) is already furious at life, then things somehow manage to get worse when her mother Lauren, also known as Scarlet (Ayvianna Snow), overdoses. This forces Red to leave London behind and move into her estranged grandmother Penelope’s (Lynsey Beauchamp) giant Scottish estate. Because when life falls apart, apparently the answer is always “go live in a spooky mansion with a relative you’ve never met.”
The early stretch leans hard into bitter teen drama, and wow, Red is not making it easy to root for her. She’s angry, rude, impulsive, and seems determined to speedrun every terrible decision imaginable. Wander into the creepy forest after being explicitly warned not to? Of course. Start making questionable choices around town almost immediately? Naturally. At one point, Red Riding almost feels less like a horror movie and more like a public service announcement titled “How Not to Survive Literally Anything.”
That said, credit where it’s due. Victoria Tait absolutely nails the role. If writer Peter Stylianou intended Red to be frustratingly obnoxious and make me regularly mutter “oh come on” at the screen, mission accomplished. Tait commits fully to the attitude, bitterness, and reckless behavior, making Red believable even when she’s actively testing your patience.
The problem is that Red Riding moves at a pace that could politely be described as “taking its sweet time.” There are creepy moments sprinkled throughout, particularly an eerie forest sequence where it’s never quite clear whether what Red experiences is real or a dream, but the film spends much more time in slow-burn family drama territory than actual thriller or horror. The monstrous wolf mythology, missing children, and dark family secrets all sound juicier on paper than they feel in front of my eyes.
For a directing debut, Craig Conway does an adequate job, and to be fair, the movie looks great. After he has acted in some pretty good films, including the criminally unheard of Dog Soldiers, I expected he had learned plenty of tricks. The Scottish setting gives Red Riding an atmospheric backdrop that practically begs to do half the storytelling itself. Unfortunately, Conway seems terrified of silence. The soundtrack rarely stops and often blasts its way through scenes, constantly reminding viewers how they’re supposed to feel instead of letting atmosphere and emotion breathe naturally. Sometimes less really is more.
Conway and the crew also make sure nobody forgets this is a Little Red Riding Hood adaptation, dropping reminders whenever possible. Thankfully, there’s a fun little wink for sharp-eyed viewers, including a genuinely amusing easter egg involving Conway’s own name appearing on one of the missing person flyers.
By the time Red Riding finally embraces the horror side, things get satisfyingly bloody, with practical effects thankfully doing the work. In the end, this is a decent first effort from Craig Conway, but not one I’d rush back to revisit. If you stumble across it and enjoy slow-burn horror dramas, leave it on. Just don’t go trekking through the woods specifically looking for it. You’ve already seen how bad decisions work out here.
