Riddle of Fire (2024)
Directed by: Weston Razooli
Premise: Three children (Phoebe Ferro, Skyler Peters, Charlie Stover) embark on a quest that takes them from their home into the local mountains where they encounter a cultish outlaw family.
What Works: Riddle of Fire is fundamentally a fairytale. It has the same structure and familiar elements found in Grimm’s Fairy Tales and other folklore but with a contemporary twist. A trio of children are nursing their sick mother and they go on a journey to get her a blueberry pie. Their motivation is not altogether altruistic; if the children get the pie they can get the password to operate the TV and use the new video game system that they stole from a warehouse. But the journey for pie is a winding road that takes the children into the country and brings them into contact with an outlaw family whose matriarch may be a witch. The fantastic elements of Riddle of Fire are presented in a very matter of fact way. The whole picture is grounded in earthy and tactile visual textures. There’s no obvious digital effects and the movie relies on creating a fairytale-like tone that verges on magical realism. The pitch of Riddle of Fire is stylized in a way that bridges the fairytale elements with the present-day setting. The characters speak in a dialect and syntax that sounds like classic fantasy dialogue. Riddle of Fire also draws from the youth-oriented adventures of the 1980s like The Monster Squad and Explorers especially in the way it allows these kids to be troublemakers. They steal and use paint guns but they also encounter real danger. The willingness to make these kids imperfect and put them in peril gives Riddle of Fire an edge. That quality along with the fairytale template and the canted tone make this a really unique film.
What Doesn’t: The three principal characters of Riddle of Fire are not well distinguished from each other. In a team up movie like this such as Stand By Me or The Goonies, each character usually has their own look and key personality trait and a social role within the group. The young characters of Riddle of Fire are mostly interchangeable. They all talk about the same and have similar temperaments. The dialogue of Riddle of Fire is very interesting with the unique syntax usually found in a classical fantasy story. The dialogue wavers between that sound and a contemporary vocabulary. It’s very wordy and the child actors occasionally struggle to deliver the lines.
Disc extras: Available on MUBI.
Bottom Line: Riddle of Fire is a unique picture and it establishes writer and director Weston Razooli as a promising filmmaker with a distinct voice. The movie struggles in some of its ambitions, especially with its young cast, but Riddle of Fire’s rough edges suit its tone.
Episode: #1014 (September 22, 2024)