69
Metascore
14 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineThe most innovative, intelligent, and visually sumptuous horror film of recent years.
- 90Time OutTime OutLike all the best fairy-tales, the film is purely sensual, irrational, fuelled by an immense joy in story-telling, and totally lucid. It's also a true original, with the most beautiful visual effects to emerge from Britain in years.
- 83The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasA 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.
- 80The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyIt's also absolutely jam- packed with the kind of symbols that delight Freudian analysts of culture, particularly of folk tales.
- 80Los Angeles TimesKevin ThomasLos Angeles TimesKevin ThomasBy 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]
- 75Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertIt 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.
- 60EmpireIan NathanEmpireIan NathanIt 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.
- 60The Irish TimesThe Irish TimesRich 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]
- 50Chicago TribuneGene SiskelChicago TribuneGene SiskelIt 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]