Riddle of Fire

Weston Razooli's debut feature is the delightful and comedic story of three ragamuffin kids who embark on an odyssey when their sick mother won't let them play video games until they've completed a task for her. This is not a film that starts in "the real world" and traverses into fantasy; the material/imaginative hybrid environment of this picture is present from the opening sequence in which the kids steal the latest video game system from a warehouse to the final scene in which they return home. Shooting on grainy anamorphic 16mm film, Razooli and cinematographer Jake Mitchell create a rural world of magic and monsters, forests and cottages, gas stations and supermarkets, pick-up trucks and dive bars. Everything in the film exists within the internal logic and understanding of its young protagonists. They are wonderfully played by Charlie Stover and Skyler Peters as brothers Hazel and Jodie A'Dale, and Phoebe Ferro as their neighborhood pal Alice. This trio rides around on dirt bikes with make-shift weapons with which to get into mischief and fend off challengers. Over the course of their adventure, they must evade kidnapping by poachers, outwit a huntsman, confront a witch, befriend a fairy, and escape the mysterious lair of some creatures of the night—all of these characters being as credibly Earthly and ordinary as they are supernatural.