A trio of best friends, Alice (Phoebe Ferro), Jodi (Skyler Peters), and Hazel (Charlie Stover), are ecstatic over the release of a new video game system and they cannot wait to play it together.  Unfortunately, the TV has been locked by Jodi and Hazel’s mom, Julie (Danielle Hoetmer), so that she can rest and recover from being sick.  She tells the trio that a blueberry pie from Celia (Colleen Baum), the town backer, would have her feeling better in no time, but when the bakery is sold out of the pies, the three embark on a wild, magical, and dangerous journey to secure the ingredients and make a pie of their own. 

Riddle of Fire is writer/director Weston Razooli’s feature debut which premiered as part of the Director’s Fortnight during the 2023 edition of the Cannes Film Festival.  Yellow Veil Pictures teamed up with Vinegar Syndrome for the distribution of this delightful, 115-minute tale of friendship and the power of imagination.  Whimsically shot by Jake L. Mitchell and assembled by Razooli, the later of which also stars in a supporting role as Marty, Riddle of Fire is an effusive ode to childhood, caught in the crosshairs of the argument that videogames have stifled children’s creativity. 

Razooli is a filmmaker who cut his teeth on music videos and shorts, and for his feature debut he centered the story around no less than four children and one deer; children and animals, the two things filmmakers are often warned to avoid. To the credit of Razooli and his cast, the three foster a great camaraderie together, and when Petal (Lorelei Olivia Mote), a young girl with woodland sprite-like tendencies, is introduced, they welcome her into the fold and the shared dynamic evolves into something fuller without feeling like the core has been unidentifiably altered. The kids give it their all, but the performances are very unrefined, and it does put up a barrier to entry for the film as it is like we are peering directly into the wild world of imagination but there is a hesitancy and rigidness introduced to the situation once Mitchell’s lens is introduced. Importantly, the performances are not bad and the young cast share some tender and emotional moments as they slowly navigate with what it means to be getting older, but they are let down by Razooli either through the direction or the writing that asks them to dip into an uninhibited state of mind that they just were not ready to make the leap towards. 

It is those emotional moments, though, where the film truly shines. Hazel reminisces with Jodi about a summer when he and Alice became very close, and though they are too young for it to be a romance in the adult sense of the word, they commiserate like two old souls while still using the language of play that it gives so much credence to this schoolyard crush. It was surely purposeful that casting director Jeff Johnson found an actress who was taller than the two boys because the film is constantly operating in the shadow of an unknown fear; a sick mother, an absent father, and growing responsibility, it is all leading toward the end of childhood. Unlike many coming-of-age films that pick up at the dawn of that then unknown to be final summer – Stand by Me (1986), Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001), Stambul Garden (2020), Live is Life (2022) – Razooli gives his gang at least a few more cycles of the calendar to enjoy each other, but because he so perfectly balances the different stages of maturity among our three heroes, we can see where the eventual cracks will form even if the film will not confront those themes directly. Alice will continue to outgrow the two brothers, and Hazel, we fear, will stay impulsive and immature, just in time for Jodi and Petal to confront their own growth, but Riddle of Fire is not that story. Instead, it sets itself far enough away from any potential schism that it unlocks that feeling of freedom in audiences not felt since they were with their own first cohort and the experience of watching the film becomes akin to flipping through a long-forgotten photo album detailing an adventure embarked on by knights with pillowcase capes, wizards with tree branch staves, or perhaps pirates armed with cardboard swords. 

Opposite the kids is a gang of poachers who practice in the occult led by Anya-Freya (Lio Tipton) and John Redrye (Charles Halford), a gritty character that could not be more different in every way.  Our trio first runs into this dastardly gang on their quest for eggs to bake the blueberry pie, specifically a speckled egg for good luck. John Redrye embodies a total shift in tone and energy compared to the youthful exuberance of Alice, Jodi, and Hazel as he snatches the last carton of eggs from the shelf and trots away in his heavy boots and denim, but his gruff demeanor still fits well into the fabric of the film as we are looking for an antagonist some fifteen minutes into the narrative. What Razooli does so well in John’s introduction is that his everyday motivations – a man at the store looking for eggs – become such a large demonstration of evil because so much of the film is filtered through the kids’ perspective that we believe it. Sure, he is buying groceries for a trip to the woods so that Anya-Freya can hunt the King of the Mountain to make ritualistic talismans and other paraphernalia that would be imbued with his power, but in the grocery store, he is just a cowboy looking for some eggs. 

The film works best when it is at this mix of real-life playing out like a video game, but it is a hard balance to achieve and an even harder balance to maintain across the runtime. As such, the film does struggle under the weight of almost two hours, but Razooli fills this world with great characters and locations that even though they may overstay their welcome, we are always re-engaged at the turn of the act and his sneaky sense of humor always delights when the action begins to dip. Riddle of Fire is a film that is so personally curated by Razooli that it defies its own weak points and is unable to fail. The proof here is when the trio is required to perform in a dance-off to secure a new egg, and from our place in the auditorium we can sit and cringe, but there is that element of play so present throughout that we do not hold it against the film. Razooli may not have crafted a perfect film, but he has created what can only be described as an animated film brought to life; one of those imported VHS tapes from Soyuzmultfilm or the like that had a rough, almost ugly style about it, but there was something fascinating about them too. It sounds like a backhanded compliment when phrased that way, but there is no clean and simple way to describe just how unique Riddle of Fire is in every choice that Razooli made in bringing this fantastical odyssey to screen.