A teenage girl in a country manor falls asleep while reading a magazine, and has a disturbing dream involving wolves prowling the woods below her bedroom window.
Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) is a teenager, living in a country house in England with her family in the present days, and having a nightmare with wolves and werewolves in the Middle Ages. In her dream, her boring sister is dead, she lives with her father and her mother, but she spends lots of time with her lovely grandmother. Granny (Dame Angela Lansbury) tells her many stories of werewolf and gives her the following advice: "- Never stray from the path in the woods, never eat a windfall apple, and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet." One day, Rosaleen, while going to visit her grandmother, meets a handsome man and bets who would arrive first at her granny's house. Soon she finds who he is.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
In the present day England, a young girl named Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) lays in her upstairs bedroom in her bed having fallen asleep while reading a magazine while her parents arrives home from shopping and her older sister knocks on her door to try to wake her up before dinner. Rosaleen then has a series of dreams that make up the bulk of this film....
Rosaleen dreams that she lives in a fairy tale forest during the late 18th century England with her parents (Tusse Silberg and David Warner) and older sister Alice (Georgia Slowe) as in real life. But one day Alice is chased down and killed by wolves while running through the woods. While her parents are mourning, Rosaleen goes to stay the night with her grandmother (Angela Lansbury), who knits a bright red shawl for her granddaughter to wear. The superstitious old woman gives Rosaleen an ominous warning, to beware men whose eyebrows meet. Granny then tells Rosaleen her own story about "wolves in human form".
Granny's tale to Rosaleen:
A young groom (Stephen Rea) is about to bed his new bride (Kathryn Pogson) when a "call of nature" summons him outside. He disappears and his bride is terrified to see wolves howling outside. A search the following day yields a wolf paw print only. Years later, she remarries and has three children, only to have her original husband finally return. Angered at her having children with a new husband, the groom transforms into his werewolf form by literally peeling off his skin, but is slain when the new husband (Jim Carter) returns.
The next morning, Rosaleen returns to her village, but finds that she must deal with the advances of an amorous teenage boy (Shane Johnstone). Rosaleen and the boy take a walk through the forest, but the boy discovers that the village's cattle have come under attack from a wolf. Rosaleen then climbs a tree to oversee the vast valley area that surrounds the small village where she lives.
Another day later, while Rosaleen is talking with Granny again at the church cemetery while the village priest is cutting branches off a large tree, she tells Rosaleen another story about being aware of who or what is out there....
Granny's second tale to Rosaleen:
A young man is walking through the enchanted forest when he encounters the Devil (Terence Stamp), anachronistically arriving in a Rolls-Royce chauffeured by the actress playing Rosaleen in a blonde wig. The Devil offers the boy a trans-formative potion, which he rubs onto his chest, causing hair to sprout rapidly. The boy is pleased, but shortly thereafter vines grow swiftly from the ground, twining around his legs and trapping him. He wails in protest and fear, his face distorting with his cries. His anguished visage appearing in Rosaleen's bedroom mirror at the end of that dream sequence.
Back in the village, Rosaleen's father and the rest of the villagers set out to hunt the wolf. While they are away, Rosaleen tells her own tale about wolves to her mother....
Rosaleen's story to her mother:
A woman (Dawn Archibald) who lived in a valley "done a terrible wrong" by a rich, young nobleman (Richard Morant) turns up visibly pregnant at his wedding party "to put wrong to right". She calls out the nobleman and the rest of the nobles for their bigoted actions, and further denounces them by declaring "the wolves in the forest are more decent". She then reveals that she is a witch and magically transforms the groom, the bride, and the other nobles into wolves. They flee into the forest as the witch laughs, but afterwards the witch commands that the wolves "serenade" her and her child each night.
The villagers then capture a wolf, but once caught and killed, the wolf's corpse transforms into that of a human being.
Rosaleen later takes a basket of goods through the woods to her grandmother's cottage, but on her way she encounters an attractive huntsman (Micha Bergese), whose eyebrows meet. He challenges her, saying that he can find his way to her grandmother's house before she can, and the pair set off. The hunter arrives at Rosaleen's grandmother's house first, where he reveals his bestial nature and kills her. Rosaleen arrives later and discovers the carnage, but her need to protect herself is complicated by her desire for the hunter. In the ensuing exchange, Rosaleen accidentally injures the huntsman with his own rifle. Upon this blow, the hunter contorts in pain and transforms into his wolf shape. Rosaleen takes pity on the wounded beast, noting that his pack could leave him behind. She sits down, and begins petting the wolf kindly and tenderly while telling him a story.
Rosaleen's story to the huntsman/wolf:
A she-wolf from the world beneath arrives at a village. Despite meaning no harm, she is shot by a villager. She reveals herself in her human form (Danielle Dax) to an old priest (Graham Crowden), who takes her in and bandages her wound. Although touched by the priest's kindness and actions, she feels she is not fit to stay. Ultimately, after some time, she returns to her world through the village well.
Ultimately the villagers arrive at the house some time later, looking for a werewolf within. Instead, they discover that Rosaleen herself has become a werewolf. Together, she and the huntsman escape to the forest, joined by a growing pack having chosen each other as mates. The wolves seem to stream into the real world, breaking into Rosaleen's house and gathering outside her bedroom. Rosaleen awakes with a scream as one wolf leaps in through her bedroom window and sends her toys crashing to the floor.... symbolizing the end of her childhood innocence.
Over the closing credits, Perrault's Le Petit Chaperon Rouge is then heard being read, with the moral warning girls to beware of charming strangers.
