Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 115 minutes
Release Date: March 22nd, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Yellow Veil Pictures
Director(s): Weston Razooli
Writer(s): Weston Razooli

You have to choose and you have to create it.

Desperate to play the latest videogame system that they stole from a local distribution center, Alice (Phoebe Ferro), Hazel (Charlie Stover), and Jodie (Skyler Peters) find themselves stymied by a recently enforced password on the latter brothers’ television. Going to Alice’s house is out of the question, so the trio decide to lay on the charm in the hopes of earning access from Ms. A’Dale (Danielle Hoetmer). Currently laid up sick in bed, she wants the kids to go out and enjoy the summer sun. But she soon gives in with a quid pro quo. If they can get her a blueberry pie from Celia’s bakery, they can play videogames for two hours first.

Considering the antics writer/director Weston Razooli put the kids through at the start of Riddle of Fire to even procure that stolen system, you know the rest of this high-style “neo-fairytale” is going to be anything but ordinary. From discovering the bakery is sold out to charming Celia herself into giving them the recipe, having the last carton of eggs taken out of their hands by John Redrye (Charles Halford)—while they were in turn stealing the rest of the ingredients—puts these self-proclaimed “reptiles” onto the path of a witch-led (Lio Tipton’s Anna-Freya) coven of animal poachers. Add some rum, a new friend (Lorelei Olivia Mote’s Petal), a chicken named Valentina, and the cops to provide us a day of dangerous fun.

The results are not going to be for everyone. It’s a very charming piece with wonderful lead roles from a quartet of kids that cannot help but endear you to their chaos, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say the two-hour runtime was a lot. The pacing is slow as we move from setting to setting with a somewhat inconsistent sense of stakes once real guns and angry criminals enter the picture (the script tries to make the adults interesting despite their convoluted mythology doing little to stop us from admitting they’re mostly just hollow obstacles needing to be overcome), but it’s tough not to get drawn in whenever the kids take center stage again. I especially liked the decision to subtitle Jodie so as not to smooth out his childish speech patterns.

If you watch the trailer and read the description, you should feel safe knowing exactly what’s in-store. So, if both seem a bit too style over substance, go with your gut. For those who find themselves enchanted by that style, however, there’s a good chance you’ll receive everything you hope to find. Put it in the category of “one crazy night” films and enjoy the super-earnest take everyone on-screen embraces to make its dialogue and magic work despite its otherwise familiar mid-west locale. I personally would have liked it to go even further (while cutting out a good twenty-to-thirty minutes), but I can’t deny its cult-status appeal or its brilliant use of young performers who are rarely afforded the opportunity to shine quite like this.

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Charlie Stover, Skyler Peters, Phoebe Ferro, and Lorelei Olivia Mote in RIDDLE OF FIRE; courtesy of Yellow Veil.