FAQ

The title is slang used by pedophiles on the internet. They refer to underage girls as "hard candy."

Also, the producer wanted a title with a "sugar and spice combination... a mixture of harsh roughness, and innocence, and vulnerability."

The answer is most emphatically no. David Slade states in his commentary that they did not have a large budget for clothing. Patrick Wilson's clothes took up all the budget and, because of the color scheme of the rooms, only red would show up significantly. Slade states (but may have been exaggerating) that they only had $20 left, and this left the costume designer with only one item on the rack, a hooded top. According to Elliot Page, the hoodie was originally orange and was changed to red in post-production.

While there was no initial significance to the red hoodie, it became the film's lasting symbol and led to Little Red Riding Hood-themed marketing. Page wears the hoodie and stands on a wolf trap in the poster, and the film's Japanese website uses the tagline, "Red Hood traps the Wolf in his own game."