Riddle of Fire is a 2023 coming-of-age adventure film written and directed by Weston Razooli in his feature film debut. It stars Skyler Peters, Phoebe Ferro, and Charlie Stover as three Free-Range Children who embark on a strangely mythical quest to fetch ingredients to make a blueberry pie.
This film provides examples of:
- All for Nothing: Just when it seems like the kids have gotten away with speckled eggs, they discover that Hazel drunkenly cracked them all. Alice screams that their whole night was for nothing. But then Petal has an idea, and the game is on.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's not clear whether Anna-Freya is actually going to bite the kids' fingers off. She seems about to do it, but the way she builds it up, such as saying she's kept her teeth sharpened, seems to suggest that she's just trying to scare the kids, especially after she just rescued Hazel from Dana Troubadour.
- Animal Motif: Some characters are likened to animals. Our three heroes are reptiles, while the twin sister Hollyhocks are wolves.
- Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Some of the fashion hearkens back to the 1970s, especially the outfits and hairstyles of Kels and Suds Hollyhock. Part of this is the idea that rural Wyoming is culturally behind, and part of it is leaning into the 1970s "folk" stylings that correspond with the film's neo-medieval fantasy aesthetic.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Hazel and Alice squabble in part because Hazel is confused by his budding romantic feelings for his friend Alice.
- Boom, Headshot!: Jodie lands a headshot on John Redrye with his paintball gun, stunning the man long enough for the kids to make their escape.
- The Cavalry: The kids are saved by the arrival of two policemen, who are actually there to arrest them.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: There is no cellphone reception in Faery Hill Forest for the kids to contact their parents. At least some of it. Late in the film, the Alice gets an internet connection on her phone.
- Chekhov's Skill: Subverted. Jodie does a distracting dance to help the trio steal from the grocery. A close-up of his feet as the other two flee shows some surprisingly skilled footwork. When Dana Troubadour demands that one of the trio do an amazing dance, Jodie volunteers. However, when he gets onstage, he just shuffles awkwardly until the rest of the kids get dragged up to dance with him.
- Color-Coded Speech: The subtitles for the Compelling Voice are purple rather than the usual yellow.
- Coming of Age Story: Alice and Hazel are just starting to discover romance.
- Compelling Voice: Anna-Freya and Petal know magic words that make people obey them. There is a rumbling sound when they use them, and their subtitles are purple, though it's unclear if it's really magic.
- Disappeared Dad: None of the four kids in the film have a father in their lives. Some left and some died.
- Fetch Quest: The trio receives a number of fetch quests to reach their objective: they have to get a blueberry pie from a specific piemaker, but she demands something cooler than ice before she'll given them the recipe. Then they have to fetch all the ingredients, but they're short a speckled egg, which takes the rest of the film.
- Fingore: Anna-Freya threatens to bite off a finger from each of the trio. She claims that she's kept her teeth sharp for just this purpose. It's not clear whether she's really going to go through with it.
- Free-Range Children: Alice, Jodie and Hazel have mopeds and are free to roam the countryside around their homes at will, especially while Jodie and Hazel's mother is sick. Ironically, the goal of their great quest is to stay inside and play video games.
- Gender-Blender Name: Hazel and Jodie are the two male kids in the trio, but their names are more commonly used for girls.
- It's Personal: After John Redrye takes their carton of eggs, the boys suggest trying a different grocery store, but Alice insists on getting back their eggs from Redrye.
- The Lad-ette: Alice is completely at home with two male companions, riding bikes, stealing, and shooting paintballs. In fact, she's the de facto leader.
- Land of Faerie: Faery Hill Forest is a Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane version. Most obvious is the name. The Enchanted Blade Gang go there on a vaguely magical hunt for the "King of the Forest." While there, Petal claims to a Fire Fairy. The trio stop in a campsite that is filled with large, red-and-white mushrooms.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: Marty Hollyhock is a part of the Enchanted Blade Gang but is less comfortable with violence and aggression than the others.
- Lock-and-Load Montage: Before the three kids have even said anything, we watch as they load their paintball guns with ammunition and air tanks.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Many characters and events have a vaguely mythic tinge to them. Most overtly, Anna-Freya Hollyhock is described as a witch, and she and her daughter speak with a Compelling Voice using purportedly magic words. However, the words only seem to work on members of their own family, so it could just be some extreme mental conditioning.
- Meaningful Name: The tough and domineering Anna-Freya is partially named after Freya, the Norse goddess of war.
- Oblivious to Love: Jodie is too young to understand why Petal keeps smiling and batting her eyelashes at him.
- Overcrank: A few physical sequences with the kids are subtly sped up to give them more urgency.
- Precision F-Strike: The trio swear more than you'd expect from a bunch of kids, but Alice's "Where the fuck are we?" is the film's only F-bomb.
- Puppy Love:
- One of the main conflicts of the film is the romantic tension between Alice and Hazel, who are both just starting to enter puberty.
- Petal is about 8 years old and immediately starts smiling and batting her eyes at the equally young Jodie, who is oblivious to the connotations.
- The Quest: The trio must fetch a speckled egg to complete the ingredients to a blueberry pie to bake for their mother so she'll give them the password to their television so they can play video games.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The police are courteous and professional, which is especially important when dealing with child offenders. Most importantly, they follow through with the kids' tip about Anna-Freya's poaching and catch the Enchanted Blade Gang.
- Running Gag: Anna-Freya always refers to ammunition as "cartridges," but Marty will immediately call them "bullets," a less technically accurate term.
- Serious Business: The kids really go to the ends of the earth for one speckled egg.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Dana Troubadour runs some sort of club and has minions, but by day he's a gas station attendant named Chip.
- Theme Naming: All of the major characters' surnames are pastoral. Hazel and Jodie are from the A'Dale family, an old-fashioned surname structure meaning "from the valley." Enchanted Blade Gang is composed of the Hollyhocks (a type of flower) and John Redrye, (rye of course being a type of grass).
- Villainous Rescue: Hazel is about to get his arm broken by Dana Troubadour before Anna-Freya appears and tells him to unhand the kids. But then she takes the kids into her own clutches.
- We Need a Distraction: Jodie helps his two companions escape with their purloined groceries by taking his shirt off and dancing on a table while the others slip out. We get a reaction shot of a comically amazed cashier.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Enchanted Blade Gang is willing to maim the kids. Dana Troubadour is also about to break Hazel's arm in retaliation for his Groin Attack.
