[Rating: 7.5/10]

The village of Daggerhorn is being terrorized by a killer wolf on a rampage. After it claims the life of an innocent maiden, the villagers decide to organize a hunt to stop the monster once and for all. However, the arrival of an infamous witch hunter brings even more alarming revelations about their supposed foe, who may be closer than they think…

As children we’ve been brought up by many versions of retold fairy tales and here is not only ‘yet another one’, but the trailer might make one think of that teenage series with the sparkly vampires, aka Twilight. I must admit that the trailer while looking interesting for it’s mystery/suspense element, put me off a little because of the obvious similarities (young people in a paranormal romance) but I ended up watching it because I am a fan of story retellings.

The story is set in a medievalesque looking village in the middle of a forest, setting up the dark and foreboding atmosphere for the show. One of the first scenes we encounter if of our main heroine as a child with her friend, trapping a cute rabbit for the purpose of making it into a fur coat. You may say that this is animal cruelty, but given the period setting of the story, this is what people would have done, even children. It was this scene which made me think that this movie was going to be different from the usual fairytale retellings. The essence of Red Riding Hood is kept, yet filled with enough new twists and turns to make it more than what I was expecting from the show. Yes there is a village plagued by wolf attacks, yes, there is a girl who will come into possession of a red cape at some point, but everything is played out in the form of a mystery. The appearance of Father Solomon, played by Gary Oldman brings us a step back in time to a Europe (presumably) plagued by the aftereffects of the Witch Trials, the villagers of Daggerhorn have to face a threat larger and more human than they imagined, and from this revelation we are plunged into a tale that could have happened during that period of history. Of course, this is no historical film neither does it claim to be, the village is fictitious, but if you’ve read any material about that period of persecution, you can imagine a similar story in source material. People who did not want to be incriminated and pointing fingers are others, spinning strange rumours of friends, family and neighbours they have known for ages due to this fear, creating a mass-havoc induced belief of devilry and supernatural craft from where there used to be none. This really happened, and this is what made this adaptation stand out from the rest.

This story is told from the view of Valerie, our main heroine whose family becomes the center of unwanted attention because the girl murdered by the wolf was her sister, who died whilst supposedly going to a secret rendezvous with the young man our heroine is pledged to marry. I do admit that I did like the tension between the two men interested in Valerie, even had their own strengths and weaknesses and honestly either would have made a good match for her. I liked that both guys weren’t totally cardboard cutouts, especially with Henry, the betrothed, who started out a bit flat and eventually proved he was a worthy candidate. The entire mystery atmosphere worked well in that I kept trying to figure out who the ‘wolf’ was. Even old grandmother wasn’t spared from being cast as a possible suspect herself. In the end, the answer was painfully obvious when I looked back at all the clues, but the slow revelations of each character constantly cast room for the slightest bit of doubt.

Is this film for everyone? Well, I think this would be a lukewarm hit or miss for most cases, while I enjoyed it, there is no denying this is Red Riding Hood with that teenage romance element that  other viewers might find unnecessary, especially for those wanting a purer adaptation of the tale. As I said before, after watching the trailer I did have my reservations as I’m not exactly into the current teenage paranormal romance craze, but I did like the unique twist to the story and turning it into a  mystery.

Galileo

[Rating: 6/10]

Genre: Mystery, Drama

Galileo centers around the strange cases encountered by police detective, Utsumi Kaori.  When Kaori gets a tough case, she goes to seek the advice of Manabu Yukawa, a brilliant and handsome but self-obsessed scientist, who solves these mysteries using a combination of mathematical and science formulae for explanations.

This is like McGuyver and Poirot rolled into one, except it failed to succeed as brilliantly, in fact it didn’t come anyway near it. This show is more to showcase the looks and brains of the Yukawa except that I did not end up getting all fangirly over him. Here is why. Firstly he’s not a terribly likeable character, yeah he has the brains and brawns and seems to be able to do everything, and I mean everything, from cooking to rockclimbing to playing squash, and has women fawning over him, but his attitude is just unbearable. He is good and knows it, is narcissistic and really only helps out in the cases when he has interest for the case, otherwise he really can’t be bothered. Kaori herself is a rather cardboard cutout character, and is really there so that Yukawa can tease to his heart’s content and so the show will have some sort of obligatory romantic plot. They had barely any chemistry at all, and half the time she’s just looking dreamily at him, which kinda spoiled my initial impression of her. But since he’s meant to be Mr. Perfect obviously she has to fall under his spell as well. Probably the only interesting bits were the parts where he explains how he solved the cases, which were pretty incredible so kudos to the imagination of the scripwriter.

People who are new to watching Japanese dramas and the mystery genre will probably like it as it’s not particularly deep or hard to understand, and maybe so will those who have a scientific geeky side in them, but personally there are many other detective shows that are more worth the time.