Red Riding (2026) Review

Rebellious Redele Riding (Victoria Tait) spends most of her time vaping, getting thrown out of school and reluctantly looking after her drug taking mother. One day, Redele comes home to find her mum dead from an overdose and she is sent to live with her only relative, which happens to be her grandmother Penelope (Lynsey Beauchamp), an aristocrat living in a mansion in the Scottish Highlands. Redele is told that her life has now changed and she will want for nothing, but her newfound status comes with potentially dreadful strings attached…

A directorial debut from frequent Neil Marshall collaborator Craig Conway, it won’t come as the biggest surprise that Marshall himself serves as Executive Producer on this urban sass meets landed class update of the classic fairy tale. What does surprise is Conway’s deft, unobtrusive handling of the material, resulting in fine performances from the entire cast, most notably Tait in the lead role, a convincing portrait as the troubled, perma-vaping teen having to grow up even faster than she anticipated.

As you’d expect, the sprawling aristocratic pile has a chilly air and is full of secrets, complete with a staff pairing of housekeeper Mary (Jenny Quinn) and gamekeeper Malcolm (Bill Fellows) whose good cop/bad cop routines and dire warnings about not wandering into the woods alert the viewer to the fact that Redele may be far less safe in the picturesque countryside than her previous inner-city surroundings. Of course, there wouldn’t be much of a movie if Red weren’t curious and, yes, an off-road shortcut proves too tempting.

Red Riding is an atmospheric trek into rural terror, bolstered by comment upon the lives of working class folks living in a village where the shadows cast by nobility generate a buzz of low key resentment. Red finds some kind of awkward kinship with those who hang around the pub and survive on menial work and petty crime but there’s a tragic inevitably about the clash between the haves and the have nots.

Considering Neil Marshall’s on board and the original source text is somewhat wolf-centric, do we get a ton of gory, Dog Soldiers-style lupine action? Actually, no, despite the reminders, both visual and verbal, concerning a number of missing children and various visions of the furry critters eyeing Red up from the undergrowth. The adaptation is best described as a very loose one, spinning off in a number of radically different directions from the familiar trials and tribulations of the cardinal caped lass you know.

Peter Stylianou’s screenplay contains so many detours and possible threats, plus a stacked list of characters with their own specific motivations, that it often feels overloaded. The plot strands do eventually knit together but it’s courtesy of a convenient showdown where everyone ends up at the same place and, prior to that, these diversions almost feel like segments of an anthology with Red as the focal point.

There’s also a couple of moments in which people are allowed to escape because that appears to be the easiest way to move matters along to the next sequence. Malcolm starts off as a crack shot, then can’t even hit a reversing car at close range, then regains his shooting mojo in order to put a bullet square through someone’s forehead from distance. In the same act, it looks like Red is about to have a limb removed by one of the admittedly unnerving villains of the piece but then her assailant vanishes completely in order for her friends from the village to come and untie her. I thought this was going to be a fake out so the brute could attach those trying to save Red – ideal for a good jump scare – but no, they’ve decided to head off somewhere else, ready to show up later.

In keeping with its nineteenth century incarnation, Red Riding is often grim (not going to apologise at all for that, you knew it was coming). The plotting takes a particularly unpleasant turn during the middle section, which features a prolonged assault being perpetrated on an incapacitated Red. It’s dark, it’s initially effective but it also feels a tad unnecessary and leering, at odds with the suggested horrors of the opening half. As a whole, it’s agreeably dark but on occasion I felt this fell into the trap of being nasty purely for the sake of it.

Still, this is a solid effort, which wisely pushes its jump scares into the background for the most part, after a couple of early jolts to keep the audience wary. It’s a bit of a shame that there’s too much detail to be crammed into a genre friendly runtime, leaving at least one intriguing subplot underdeveloped and turning its slow burn first hour into a shrieking, bloody rush to resolve it all. However, it’s plain to see that Conway is a talented director and his handling of the material elevates the messy machinations.

Movie Rating:

Red Riding trailer