Tzang Merwyn Tong’s 2005 medium-length film A Wicked Tale is a dark psychological reinterpretation of Le Petit Chaperon rouge (also known as Little Red Riding Hood). Through its vivid yet eerie visual style, the film gradually draws the audience into the seductive journey of a young woman, leading towards an unexpected ending that overturns the familiar narrative of this classic fairy tale.
When I first watched Tzang’s A Wicked Tale, I was breaking out in a cold sweat: how could a film so heavily imbued with paedophilic undertones be screened in a cinema? As the narrative unfolded, however, I gradually breathed a sigh of relief. The film’s narrative bears a closer resemblance to Charles Perrault’s version of Little Red Riding Hood, first published in Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals: Tales of Mother Goose, than to the familiar retelling popularised by the Brothers Grimm. In Perrault’s tale, the wolf deceives Little Red Riding Hood into revealing her grandmother’s whereabouts, before devouring them both.
The film’s ending, however, departs dramatically from Perrault’s tragic conclusion. In Tzang’s version, the young girl kills both the wolf and the hunter, overturning the power dynamics underlying Perrault’s emphatic moral warning against the dangers of predatory men. Perrault concludes his story with a cautionary verse:
From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, […] Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!
Where Perrault’s tale warns young women against the dangers of predatory men, A Wicked Tale imagines a different outcome: the girl does not merely escape her predators but actively retaliates against them. The reversal of power becomes especially pronounced when she picks up a saw and severs the leg of the “strange gentleman”. At this moment, the man ceases to be the dominant force within the power structure; the girl becomes the agent of violence rather than its passive victim.
The film’s perspective further complicates this reversal. Rather than following the familiar trajectory of the fairy tale from the girl’s encounter with the wolf, the narrative begins in a hospital, where the wolf is receiving treatment. The story that follows unfolds as a fantasy—or perhaps a distorted recollection—through his perspective. This cyclical narrative structure traps the wolf in a seemingly endless nightmare, in which the predator repeatedly becomes the prey of the young girl. The familiar power dynamic between the two is thus continually overturned, leaving the wolf vulnerable to the very violence he once inflicted upon others.
At first glance, Tzang’s A Wicked Tale may seem provocative, even questionable, in its treatment of paedophilic desire. Yet as its vivid and unsettling journey unfolds, the film reveals unexpected layers of meaning. By subverting the original fairy tale’s moral framework and trapping the wolf in a cycle of vulnerability and violence, Tzang invites us to reconsider not only the dangers concealed beneath seemingly innocent encounters but also the intricate relationship between male desire, fantasy and violence.
A Wicked Tale will have a limited theatrical release in Singapore at SFS Somerset from 16 October 2026. The screening on 16 October will be followed by a post-screening Q&A with the director.
Written by Lee Peng Ming, edited by Phyllis Chan