Riddle of Fire Review: The Neo-Fairy Tale of Your Dreams

One of my favorite hobbies is going onto IMDB and looking at the posters for upcoming movies and TV. Sometimes I’ll find something that I’m interested in, and I’ll add it to my watchlist. That’s what happened with Weston Razooli’s debut Riddle of Fire.

Riddle of Fire follows three mischievous children, brothers Hazel (Charlie Stover) and Jodie (Skyler Peters) and their friend and reluctant leader Alice (Phoebe Ferro), on a quest to find a speckled egg to make a blueberry pie for Hazel and Jodie’s sick mom. 

Remember how the only plot that was revealed for Everything Everywhere All At Once was just “A woman struggles to complete her taxes,” until we actually saw the movie and realized it was a lot deeper than we thought? That’s what I realized the Riddle of Fire plot was—something bigger in disguise.

The film feels like a video game, where you’re given side quests to boost your XP and stats and go through the game solving puzzles and gaining new allies and skills. Which makes sense, because the inciting incident of the film is the three kids stealing a video game system from a warehouse. They go home, but before they can play, they find out Hazel and Jodie’s mom set a password for the TV. (spoiler alert: this password is the riddle. The Riddle of Fire (the password program for the TV, is named like “Fire-something”). It took me two minutes longer to get that than my roommate). 

The only way she will give them the password is to make a blueberry pie, since that’s something her mother would make her when she was sick. So starts an epic tale of finding a special speckled egg, since the baker says that it’s good luck to have a “speckled egg.” 

The kids go on a rowdy, wild adventure to get the speckled egg for the pie. Unfortunately, the last box of speckled eggs ends up in the hands of John Redeye (played by Charles Halford), the right hand man of Anna-Freya Hollyhock (played by Lio Tipton). Anna-Freya is the leader of the Enchanted Blade Gang, a group of poachers who, under Anna-Freya’s watchful eye, use witchcraft to try and kill The Prince of the Mountain, a.k.a. a huge buck.

Anna-Freya’s daughter and “Princess” of the gang, Petal Hollyhock (Lorelei Olivia Mote), is a lonely kid who wants to be with the gang, but Anna-Freya wouldn’t let her. You really start to feel for Petal in these scenes, and can see the parallels between Jodie and Hazel’s mom and Petal’s mom. Julie A’Dale (played by Danielle Hoetmer) wants to give the boys and Alice some structure by only playing video games for a few hours instead of the whole day and wants them outside. Anna-Freya, on the other hand, places a lot of restrictions on poor Petal and tells her that there’s lunch and dinner options in the fridge. 

I understand this is very much a cultural thing, and me growing up in the suburbs of the California Bay Area is a lot different than the ruralness of Wyoming. But you can’t help but notice the stark different between the two families.

Petal sneaks into John Redeye’s truck, right before Alice, Hazel, and Jodie sneak in to get the egg from John. Soon, they reach a…state park? Patch of wilderness? Either way, the Enchanted Blade gang set up shop and the Lizard Gang are hot on their tail—as is Petal, who really just wants some friends.

The movie going from fun little adventures to the kids getting in some real danger (including going to a place that definitely isn’t a club, but most certainly feels like it) is very stark. At first, you share a childlike wonder with the main characters, thinking they’re invincible, but when things get real and a little scary, the audience is starting to gain a bit of sense, and by the end you’re screaming, “Just run, guys!” But you have to remember, they’re kids, and Razooli (who wrote as well as directed the film) wrote them in a way that they had that childlike mentality of indestructability.

All of the actors did such a fantastic job, especially Skyler Peters as Jodie and Lorelei Mote as Petal—they each had such great one-liners and deliveries. I also LOVED Lio Tipton as Anna-Freya Hollyhock. She did such an amazing job being so evil and bewitching over her gang, I was almost entranced watching her, especially when she would cast her spells on her siblings, played by Rachel Browne, Andrea Browne, and director/writer Razooli.

I think one of the few qualms I have is…I thought it took place in 1979? I have no idea, I swear I thought an early poster said 1979, so I was confused why there were smartphones and laptops in it. But it was such a small thing, I quickly forgot about it.

One of my favorite things about the movie was where and how I saw it. The Cannes debut had a limited release, and when I looked at showings there were none in Oregon–not even in Portland. The closest showing that wasn’t in California was in Seattle. Since I had never been, I thought it would be fun to take my roommate and drive up, make a weekend out of it. We saw Riddle of Fire and the Grand Illusion Cinema in Seattle on 35 mm film! It was such a cool experience, from the theater itself to the film as a whole.

Great movie, something you can sit back and think back to your own zany childhoods—or imagine one like it. Absolutely go and see it, you won’t regret it. And let’s be honest, the poster is pretty sick.