Of Swords and Parasols

This is the latest SyFy Movie Of The Week.  It, is, indeed, as bad as reported in many ways, but I kind of adored it in some others.

The concept is that Red Riding Hood's descendants are werewolf hunters and one of her descendant's fiance gets bitten by a powerful new werewolf.  Now really, did you expect me to resist that?

The FX are terrible, the script awfully cliche and only about half the acting was any better than phoned in, and I was disappointed wth how little it did with the fairy tale aspect, which was my main interest.  However:

1.  The opening scene is a little girl hiding in the attic and seeing her grandmother get attacked by a werewolf.  Grandma dies, but not before stabbing it with a silver knife and making it burst into flames.  The prologue ends with the girl (presumably Little Red Riding Hood) climbing down and picking up the knife, and coming to a decision.

2. Plenty of teeny badass heroine with gun pr0n.  Also, she had agency.

3.  Badass  grandma.  If not enough of her.

4.  Terrible monster transformation scenes make me giggle.  Happily.

5.  Though there are male and female descendants, it's clearly regarded as a female mythic heritage, which is reenforced by both the prologue and the epilogue.

6.  Only one male character I wanted to throttle.  The last SyFy Movie Of The Week I watched was Stonehenge Apocalypse, and he was a vast improvement over all of them.  Not that I wasn't happy when he bit the dust.

7.  The ending, though cheesy as all get out, was the kind of awesome deconstruction of both "true love over all else" and "true love before the rest of the world" that I tend to love.  and, uhm, others seem to not like.  Just saying.

So, basically, I wish I could have this same thing, but as something actually, well, good.