1996 Directed by Matthew Bright
A twisted take on "Little Red Riding Hood", with a teenage juvenile delinquent on the run from a social worker traveling to her grandmother's house and being hounded by a charming, but sadistic, serial killer and pedophile.
USA
Sundance Film Festival
USAR
France16
Germany16
AustraliaR18+
UK18
Australia
France
Germany
UK
USA
Brothers Grimm: 90’s cult white trash edition.
Scuzzfest big bad wolf pedo serial killer time capsule of my favorite Reese Witherspoon performance. Lewd, crude, and one hell of a mood, Freeway boasts a great cast and is one of those movies I discovered by accident in the mid 90’s—it’s been a low key favorite ever since.
I hadn’t seen this since the VHS glory days, but damn it still holds up! This is a superb modern white trash take on Little Red Riding Hood with tons of violence and dark subject matter.
The acting all around is pretty brilliant, but Reese Witherspoon gives one of the greatest performances of all time. Every time I hear an accent like that, I automatically revert back to my full-on NC accent so I’ll probably be talking like her for the rest of the day. Also, shoutout to Susan Barnes as Ms. Collins because she was hysterical.
Holy shit! Look who got beat with the ugly stick. Is that you Bob?
-Vanessa
Forget 2011's Red Riding Hood with Amanda Seyfried. It might be 18 years old, but Freeway is the only modern take we need on Little Red Riding Hood. It's the L.A. contemporary white trash version of the Brothers Grimm fairytale where the wolf is replaced by a serial killer/pedophile and Red Riding Hood is replaced by the illiterate teenage daughter of a hooker. Off to grandma's house we go!
Here Red's name is Vanessa Lutz and she is played by Reese Witherspoon in what has to be the craziest performance of her career and therefore her best. Vanessa is a charismatic little gutter punk with…
Man, the 90s sure were dangerous, huh? Wasn't even safe to be a serial killer.
I used to love this crazy-ass thing in the 90s. A weird little oddity that was on a shortlist of films that I practically wore out the VHS for. Then the 2000s came crashing in and I was all busy trying to adult and shit (41 now and still haven't quite got the hang of it), and I forgot all about this and so many other films from that period of my life. I think I just watched them so many times that I kind of wore them out, and needed a break. But here I am, all these years later, looking for some random…
Why you killing all them girls, Bob?
girl vs. the big bad wolf, unhinged and trashy is the best way to describe this demented reimagining of the classic story of Little Red Riding Hood. Completely mind-blown by how gritty and filthy this was, you can smell sweat and cigarette smoke off this damn thing. mixing crime drama and dark fairytale—even throwing in some of that scuzzy 70s exploitation woman’s prison melodrama— Freeway is relentless with its constant no-fucks given tone and fully relies on its performances. Reese is one feisty woman in this and that accent is pure bliss, she’s just spewing one-liners and taking no shit from anyone—this movie is nothing without her!— Kiefer’s transformation from nice guy to psychopath freeway serial killer is maddening as it is quick, but completely believable.
fucking weird little 90s oddity, shot straight to the top of my fav Vinegar Syndrome releases.
“why did you call him all those names?”
“because he didn’t say he was sorry!”
"Freeway" is a 1996 crime thriller that plays heavily into the themes of exploitation. Directed by Matthew Bright who was also a featured lead actor within the film "Forbidden Zone" (1980), "Freeway" blends the flair of whacko absurdism from "Forbidden Zone" where no theme is safe and applies to a movement within the 90's that is already a revisionists version of 70's exploitation. While you can say that this film has the same flared gritty temperaments of a Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, or even an Álex de la Iglesia film you would be right, but additionally the film is also uniquely its own in an off the wall and at times, suicidal trip into crime fantasy with the most amount…
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To be a young person in the 1980's and 1990's was to be told that you were disposable, that you were violent, that you were sociopathic, that you were a burden to a class that had forgotten about you several marriages ago and whatever novelty there had been to your early years of crying and trauma and the tiresome not ever getting better meant that there needed to be a place to flush you a system to keep you in from school to prison to hospital to prison hospital to solitary confinement to the streets to the prison to the hospital to the morgue and the fact that you were there meant that they were right the people who made…
A darkly comedic, trailer trash version of Little Red Riding Hood starring Kiefer Sutherland as the Big Bad Wolf and Reese Witherspoon as Little Red. It's as fantastic as it sounds. 🐺💥🤛🏻👧🏼
I had a blast revisiting Freeway with Michelle.
Considering how young she was when she starred in this irreverent modern take on Little Red Riding Hood, which substitutes the deep dark woods for the sunny I-5, Reese Witherspoon delivers a hell of a performance. She's unpredictable and captivating as street-smart sassy trailer trash heroine Vanessa Lutz and always in complete control of her character (and her accent!). It's probably going too far to say the then 19-year old actress carries the movie on her back but she's definitely the beating heart that pumps the blood to its extremities.
With an executive producer credit, you wonder how much input Oliver Stone actually had cos there's a definite NBK feel to this. It plays out like a violent comic book,…
what
I don't even know where to begin, so let's just try to take this chronologically. I enjoy plenty of black comedy, and a lot of trashy films. Something like Pink Flamingos features nearly constant objectionable material, but it works because it's pushed into the realm of absurdity and every John Waters film has such heart at the core. He makes trash because he loves society's outcasts. Freeway has no such heart. It's a black hole of edgy nihilism. Right from the beginning, prostitutes, drug addictions, and molestation of family members are played for laughs. I assume that the very opening in which we see that the protagonist can't read is also meant to be amusing, but the tone is…
The Red Riding Hood folktale has always been creepy. I've heard many versions of it, and even the most sanitized can't avoid the disturbing atmosphere of a wolf (a virile, dangerous symbol) stalking a little girl and eating her grandmother. This over-the-top modernization doesn't bother with any sanitizing, really. It's goofy and kinda dumb, but glorious all the same. Reese Witherspoon jumps into that accent with abandon, and it just escalates from there.
Actually, it jumps into the trashy goofiness with the opening credits, wherein the Big Bad Wolf motif is pounded into your brain with comic strip illustrations. A lot of upskirt shots and other male gaze tell us that the metaphor of the wolf won't entirely be a…
