Riddle of Fire

In Ribbon, Wyoming, three children end up on a strange odyssey when their mother sends them on an errand.

Ah, the good old days of the 1980s wild west childhood…

That bygone era where, after a morning of cartoons and sugar cereals, with no other responsibilities and the sun high above, you would bike off on a Saturday afternoon in search of adventure. Those were long hot days of exploring local ruins, dark culverts, and half-done construction sites, of running through the woods, of dodging death on your bike in heavy traffic, and of ditching the weird van that was slowly following you through the park. They were days of playing with fire on an oily floor of an abandoned garage, of idly shoplifting and maybe doing some random vandalism, of jumping your bikes off of rickety ramps, and of splashing around in filthy gray-water creeks. They were days of fistfights with the rival kids from the next street over, of openly mocking the strange busybody adults who would dare challenge you, thinking they had power, and of running from security guards and cops after setting off a bunch of fireworks or while trespassing somwhere. All of which was done aimlessly and on a whim, just a wide open Saturday afternoon of no supervision, no helmets, no pads, no money, and definitely no phone, no way at all for your parents to contact you, or even to find you, with your only instruction being to be home before the streetlights came on, or to come home immediately should the sound of your parents bellowing your name into the clear blue sky suddenly echo over the rooftops of the neighborhood. These were days of blood and sweat and happiness. To quote Canada’s favorite singer/songwriter: “We were young and wild and free.”

The Riddle of Fire is about the magical, and kind of dangerous, adventures that a group of kids experience while they’re young and wild and free and out riding bikes. And while I’m pretty sure the film is actually set in modern times, and only looks so 1980s because it’s also set in a rural small town, it still feels very much like the 1980s in a way that will speak directly to your Gen X childhood nostalgia. Watching the film, it really put me in mind of something like the Goonies mixed with something like George Romero’s 1981 Renn Faire drama, Knightriders.

The Riddle of Fire is a film is about kids on an adventure, an adventure that is largely set in kids’ world, that half real, half fantastical fairytale-like place just next door to the real world, presented here in all its wonderous beauty and ugly danger.

The movie opens with three kids—the two brothers, Hazel and Jodie, and their best friend Alice—hauling ass down a wooded country road on their dirtbikes. It’s summer time and the three of them have been turned loose upon the world. Left to their own devices, they are a trio of wild little barbarians, out tearing around town and causing trouble. Armed with paintball guns, ski masks, and some gummy worms, they’re on a mission to break into a local warehouse to steal a new video game system. Crack shots with their paintball guns, they make quick work of the barely-invested security, before thundering off back home with their newly pilfered prize, triumphant.

But once home, after settling in with their snacks and drinks on the couch, they discover, to their horror, that Hazel and Jodie’s sick mother (probably due to COVID) has put a parental lock on the TV, so they can’t play their new video game. Try as they might, they can’t guess the password either, and the only way mom will cough it up is if they get her a particular blueberry pie that her delirium has her craving. Summer is nearly over, and the idle days the kids have at hand to devote purely to video gaming are swiftly coming to an end, so the kids agree… they’ll go get the pie for mom.

The quest now set, they venture forth.

What follows is the long day and night of these kids’ meandering odyssey, as they laugh, dance, bond, tempt danger, and even grown up a little bit, all while chasing the dream of this blueberry pie all across their little town.

Right from the start, it’s bad news… They discover that the baker is sick too (probably from COVID too), so there’s no fresh pies at the bakery. They track down the baker at her house, and she agrees to give them the recipe, but only after sending them off on a side quest for her. Finally getting the recipe, they head to the grocery store, only to see the last egg taken by some local scumbag, a real Woodsy Bastard, as the kids call him, so they tail him in the hopes of stealing it back. Turns out, the Woodsy Bastard is part of a local hillbilly coven called The Enchanted Blade. They know real magic, are up to no good, and are nothing but trouble. By stowing away in the The Enchanted Blade’s truck, the kids find themselves in the deep woods, and in their attempt to steal the egg while the Enchanted Blade work their magic, the egg gets broken, and the kids end up getting chased all over by the cult members for interrupting their ritual.

The kids have to steal a car to get away.

But while there, they meet a young girl named Petal, who is the daughter of The Enchanted Blade’s leader. She joins them in their quest, running away from the evil her mom is cooking up. Now a quartet, Petal leads the others to an afterhours back-alley black market that the local convenience store clerk runs, because she knows there’s a chicken there, so they can get a new egg. But the jerk of a clerk only taunts them, and refuses to give them one of the eggs, so Alice punches him in the dick. They steal a fresh egg and run, escaping into the night with the rest of the ingrediants as the cops show up and raid the place.

Through all of this, the long day and night, mom has snored away, sick in her bed. When she awkens the next morning, she has no idea how much time has passed. The kids blame her confusion on her being sick, telling her that it’s only been a couple of hours, and offer her a fresh blueberry pie.

And so, the four friends settle in on the couch to enjoy their video game together in the waning days of summer, as their mom enjoys her blueberry pie and begins to feel better, blissfully unaware of the myriad dangers the kids have just survived.

See? It’s very much like a 1980s childhood…

Overall, The Riddle of Fire is a fun little movie. The best thing it has going for it is its look and feel, and not just in the town and the people in it, and especially the kids, but the fact that it was shot on 16 mm Kodak film, and it looks like it, lending it a sense of age to the film with its radioactive technicolor hues. It almost feels like you’re sitting cross-legged on the living room floor in front of the big TV, watching The Watcher in the Woods or Escape from Witch Mountain. The score is fantastic too, a synth-driven Renn Faire sound that really gives these kids’ world a mystical air.

The script is pretty straight-forward overall, but the dialogue is written in a way so that the kids end up sounding both childlike, but also obviously not how kids actually talk. It feels like these are a group of little kids who are all using some half-understood turns-of-phrase they might have heard some older kids say, which makes sense, while also being flavored with a very “adventure-bound” style of fantasy world talk, which is meant to highlight how “kids’ world” is a strange and magical place, a just-out-sight-from-the-adults kind of wonder land, and it almost works.

Almost.

All four kids are great, and Alice in particular might grow into someone we see in movies more often. In the film, they are wild-ass, foul-mouthed little shits, fearless when it comes to confronting the asshole adults they encounter, which is nothing but fun, and at the same time, they’re also clearly still children, and their fearlessness very obviously stems from their naivete about how dangerous the world can truly be.

But the problem is…

The child actors are also obviously children, and they are not quite up to the task of delivering the nuances that the performance requires. Nor are they quite capable of consistently delivering believable line reads.

Sometimes they pull it off, but mostly… it’s a bit awkward.

This is perhaps an unavoidable reality when it comes to working with really young child actors, but it’s also the fault of the director, as there are often moments that feel very much like that thing that happens in plays where the characters are supposed to be talking fast and all at once, but the actors are all clearly waiting for each line to end before starting to say their own line, and this kind of tempo and character interaction thing is something a director can fix by working with their actors, by rehearsing, and by… well, directing. People mock George Lucas for his primary direction often being just “faster” but it really could’ve helped here. But also, like I said, these are young kid actors, so… that’s just how it goes sometimes.

In the end, you’re either in or out with this film. The kids cause trouble. They’re fine with doing it too. They laugh about it. And they don’t get punished for it. I imagine the lack of a “lesson” for the kids to learn will bother some people. I also imagine that a lot of adults who watch this will cluck-cluck-cluck about how “unrealistic” the film’s events are, or how “dangerous” the adventure is, and I mean… what do you say to that? It’s a movie, dummy. Take a xannie. Relax.

It is fair to say that the Riddle of Fire is definitely a bit exaggerated in its story, in its world, and what the kids encounter, sure, but to me, that’s the film’s whole point…

When left to their own devices, kids can get up to some crazy shit out there.

Currently a little darling of the indie film festival circuit, while I really enjoyed The Riddle of Fire, I would still call the end result much more of a “promising” film than I would necessarily say that it’s a “good” one.

It’s worth checking out, just with the right level of expectations.