Rich in imagination and ambition, and highly original as it explores the darker, sexual side of familiar fairytales, chiefly Little Red Riding Hood. [04 Nov 2005, p.9]
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Chicago Tribune by Gene Siskel
It seems that director Neil Jordan is trying to make some comment on the way classic fairy tales try to force adult attitudes on young, free spirits, but the method by which we are brought to that realization is tortuous. [22 Apr 1985, p.4C]
It is a complex and at times infuriating structure — it often helps to conceive of the film as the book of short stories it stems from — but simultaneously vivid and disturbing.
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
By the time this distinctive 1986 film is over we have been treated to a lavish fugue on the themes of childhood, wolves, eroticism and myth. [11 Jun 1989, p.2]
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
It is not a children's film and it is not an exploitation film; it is a disturbing and stylish attempt to collect some of the nightmares that lie beneath the surface of Little Red Riding Hood.
A lush, ambitious, strikingly outsized play on Charles Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood that makes explicit the dangers of a budding young woman straying from the path.
The New York Times by Vincent Canby
It's also absolutely jam- packed with the kind of symbols that delight Freudian analysts of culture, particularly of folk tales.