It’s clear from watching RED RIDING HOOD that Catherine Hardwicke doesn’t understand what made her previous film, TWILIGHT, so successful. She positions her beautiful young heroine (Amanda Seyfried) in a wintry, woodland outpost where two shirtless hunks from opposing sides of the tracks vie for her affections, all the while suggesting that either one could be a murderous werewolf. But instead of exploring this love triangle, the film opts for a plodding witch-hunt as anonymous villagers, with pitchforks and flaming torches, peer through the shutters, awaiting the next attack from the apparently fearsome beast.

When it appears, however, the werewolf is a joke – a terrible CGI monstrosity likely to frighten more graphic artists than teenage girls. Not only does it fail to convince us it wasn’t drawn in crayon, the wolf just isn’t scary – it also talks. Even when the CGI monsters in TWILIGHT were not rendered flawlessly they scared you because you knew who was inside them, wrestling with their primal urges. By keeping the wolf’s identity secret, RED RIDING HOOD is unable to explore the emotional conflict of getting involved with the “wrong guy”, or protecting your lover from your own violent nature, which is at the core of TWILIGHT’s success.

As if to compensate for this, Oldman’s Father Solomon is cold-hearted and unpredictable as the authoritative voice of the Church, determined to hold someone accountable for the murders. He is infinitely more frightening than the cartoon fuzzball that has the community in disarray, but Oldman never comes close to firing on all cylinders. Julie Christie’s grandmother is developed further than in Grimms’ fairytale, revealing a manipulative streak and great villainous potential, but David Johnson’s script never takes it far enough. Elsewhere, Valerie (our heroine) is little more than a stock damsel in distress, who looks wonderful peering through the snow from under her crimson coat, but a film must be more than just a glamour shoot for its starlet.

Valerie’s suitors, wealthy Henry (Max Irons) and woodsman Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), are all but indistinguishable from each other. Both are young, good-looking and fairly dull and neither seems motivated to fight for her affections beyond occasionally pouting. It’s unlikely teenage girls will be fighting to join “Team Henry” anytime soon, but Hardwicke seems to believe their very existence is reason enough for us to care. And when the identity of the wolf finally is revealed, it only further underscores how little the filmmakers understand the underpinnings of good drama.

While initially, returning the story to its werewolf roots might have seemed promising, RED RIDING HOOD never convinces us it’s anything other than a desperate cash grab at an audience hankering for more TWILIGHT. The glossy aesthetic, emo-rock soundtrack and Santa’s grotto set design only distract the audience further from what little is actually happening on screen. One can only hope the film’s target audience is savvy enough to opt for the trip to grandmother’s house this time and await the BREAKING DAWN.