Sometimes I come across something so small and perfect and understated that it’s hard to wrap my head around it. When it’s a movie, I find myself staring wide-eyed at it, eager to share it with the people closest to me. This is difficult when the movie is, as it often is, a particularly challenging horror movie but when it’s a film born of pure heart like Weston Razooli’s Riddle of Fire, it’s a breeze.
I can describe Riddle of Fire to you, dear reader, and it’ll sound like the kind of movie you hate. Obnoxious kids. Off-kilter dialogue. A plot that makes so little sense that by the halfway point you stop caring about it entirely and just let the movie wash over you, intoxicated by it’s many other charms. I know that when I read the description when Riddle of Fire closed out the Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness programme last year, I didn’t know what to make of it. But what if I told you that all those aspects were a feature of Razooli’s vision, rather than a bug?Â
Riddle of Fire centres around The Immortal Lizard Gang; three precocious, minibike-riding, paintball gun-toting kids – Alice (Phoebe Ferro), Hazel (Charlie Stover), and Jodie (Skyler Peters) – who just want to sit down and play their new video game, Rifts of Anaxia 6. But with a sick mom to take care of, they’re charged with the most critical of video game fetch quests – bringing back her favourite homemade blueberry pie. A series of complications have the kids encountering characters both helpful like a newfound friend Petal (Lorelai Mote), and nefarious like…Well, almost everyone else in the Wyoming hillside community. The quest runs them afoul of the Enchanted Blade Gang, and a dogged pack of hunters led by Petal’s mother, an actual witch.
Riddle of Fire feels like a speedrun through every kidventure movie, from 3 Ninjas to Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, to The Goonies, and all points in between. But Razooli never makes you feel as though he’s parodying any of these films, or condescending to them. Instead, he’s amplifying what he loves about each – the actual magic conjured through childhood friendships, the thrill of adventure and freedom, and the significance and importance of seeing things through for someone you love, even if it means traversing dangerous terrain in search of a speckled egg.
One thing that will immediately pop off the screen is Razooli’s incredible attention to detail. From costuming to sets to every word of dialogue and exposition, everything seems just so. Even when someone misses a line, it feels real, like it belongs. It reminds me most of Steven Kostanski’s Psycho Goreman in the way that the kids and adults alike speak with such a deadpan tone, even as they express the most absurd ideas. The three leads have such a lovely chemistry between them even as they needle one another, and that’s a charm that can only come from three gifted young actors and a director with the gumption to set them free.Â
Razooli’s lensing, through Kodak 16mm, give the film an 80’s vibe, which is inarguably the kidventure golden age. There’s a way that he blends stark realism with the fantasy elements in Riddle of Fire that makes the film seem as grounded as one can expect from such absurd fare. And like the best of the 80’s kids films, it doesn’t shy away from putting our four heroes (the Gang and Petal) into real, foreboding danger and scaring the audience just enough to keep them on edge.
There’s no winking at the audience in Riddle of Fire. Weston Razooli has lovingly crafted a world born from his singular vision. More charming and beautifully handmade than Wes Anderson, more edgy and downright weird than Ivan Reitman, but with an aesthetic and sensibility that’s entirely it’s own. It’s genuine and never feels ironic, and implores you as a viewer to get lost in it’s world. And if you oblige, dear reader, there’s many pleasures to be found.
