Life for today’s young’uns is frankly terrifying, even if they aren’t literally living inside a horror film, with overarching threats to their future dotted by day-to-day micro-threats. In its unassuming way as real-world fantasy, Weston Razooli’s Riddle of Fire is sensitive to these plights, and casually rejects didactic allegory about them. This, Razooli suggests, is simply a film about childhood’s rigors. Coming of age is a hero’s quest no matter how terrible its sociopolitical context may be.
Riddle of Fire treats that wound tenderly instead of massaging it with salt. DP Jake Mitchell shoots on 16 mm film, allowing each image to marinate in a gentle nostalgia, not the kind that pines for bygone days neither he nor Razooli were alive for, but the kind that recalls shared sensation. Remember: All of us were children once. The aesthetic achieved in the movie evokes childhood while dispensing with arrested referentialism. Following its premiere at Cannes last year, and subsequent screenings at Fantastic Fest and TIFF, Riddle of Fire inevitably drew comparisons to The Goonies. If the family resemblance is there, it’s distant; both films feature young protagonists, yes, and yes, both sets of protagonists contend with nefarious “families” with bad intentions, and yes, most other adults met along the journey are wholesale jerks. The blueprint is undeniable.
But Razooli believes in magic where Richard Donner believes in structuring a whole damn picture around nods to Merian C. Cooper, Mel Brooks, Jim Sharman, and a host of other, better filmmakers. Riddle of Fire takes place in a world separate from ours, where neither King Kong, nor High Anxiety, nor The Goonies exist. Razooli has cut his story off from pop culture, left the characters and the narrative deprived of opportunity to wink and nudge at the movies that rank among his inspirations. What results from that isolation is pure and true. Three kids – siblings Hazel (Charlie Stover) and Jodie (Skyler Peters), and their friend Alice (Phoebe Ferro) – long to get their hands on a new, grungy-looking video game, and in keeping with their age, they make a scheme to steal it; their success is black-flagged at the last lap by the password to Hazel and Jodie’s TV, which their mother, Julie (Danielle Hoetmer), won’t surrender… unless they can bring her a blueberry pie.
What mishaps and hijinks and near-misses ensue as the trio pursue their mission can be shuffled under the categories of “adventure” and “magical realism,” with magic enjoying increasing occupation as Razooli’s plot ambles along. Riddle of Fire has a destination in mind, and shrugs off any urgency to get there; Julie wants that pie, but she’s also conked out, sick in bed, so she can wait. Kindly, blamelessly, the film installs Julie as its symbol of sympathetic absentee parenting. She cares about her kids, but she’s as susceptible to illness as the next person, a distant echo of peak COVID. Hazel, Jodie, and Alice are left to their own devices, so it makes sense that Riddle of Fire moves unhurriedly.
Frankly, a tighter cut might have kneecapped the gradual emergence of witchcraft summoned by Anna-Freya Hollyhock (Lio Tipton), leader of a ne’er-do-well group called The Enchanted Blade. Of all the unsavory grownups the gang runs afoul of in their bid to bake that damn pie, Anna-Freya is clearly the most dangerous; the others are, at worst, large-diameter assholes comfortable with bullying children. This, too, captures a certain honesty about the ultimate indifference to well-being that kids face in 2024. With harder edges, the film would draw blood. Instead, the intent is to stir encouragement for the incoming generation: That the quest has a happy ending, that evil like Anna-Freya is “evil” rather than “a sorcerous criminal” and can be bested, and that if you apply yourself, you’ll bake that pie for Mom. It takes a little help from your friends, is all.
Director: Weston Razooli
Writer: Weston Razooli
Starring: Charlie Stover, Skyler Peters, Phoebe Ferro, Danielle Hoetmer, Lio Tipton, Charles Halford, Lorelei Mote
Release Date: March 22, 2024
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers the movies, beer, music, and being a dad for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours. He has contributed to Paste since 2013. You can follow him on Twitter and find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65% craft beer.