Weston Razooli Found Magic in the Uintahs

If I had to describe Park City Director Weston Razooli’s debut feature film, it would be “redneck Studio Ghibli”—a kaleidoscope of color and magic and an ode to dusty summers spent on dirt bikes. So when I had the opportunity to ask Razooli if he approved of my take on Riddle of Fire, he told me, “That’s exactly what I was going for.” However, when asked to pin down a genre for the film himself, Razooli begins by saying, “It’s not quite a fantasy, although there is a fantastical element to it.” He instead describes the film as a “neo-fairytale,” a term he originated for the film during the writing process. “What the neo-Western is for the Western film, the neo-fairytale does for the fairytale film,” he explains.

The neo-fairytale itself, Riddle of Fire, follows the plight of three children in rural Wyoming on a quest to retrieve a special egg for their mother’s blueberry pie. As innocent as it may seem, our young protagonists are violently plunged into mystic peril akin to the dangers from classics such as The Goonies and Labyrinth. Although these horror elements give Riddle its edge, they also push the envelope for most modern family-friendly films. Razooli says that this comes from a place of nostalgia for him. “What I ended up going for was this tone that a lot of older kids’ movies get, like Disney’s Treasure Island,” he says. “They were less afraid of making kids’ movies a bit scarier and those are the ones I really remember.” He continues by saying that “It plays into the fairytale aspect of it as well because there are [fairytales in] basically every genre, and one of those genres is horror. It’s just part of an adventure.”

“They were less afraid of making kids’ movies a bit scarier and those are the ones I really remember.”

While Riddle of Fire borrows a lot of its themes and ideas from the retro action adventures of the ‘80s and ‘90s, this antiquity is offset by its modern setting, another purposeful choice on Razooli’s part. “As an artist and filmmaker, I’m trying to keep this thing alive where kids and people in general can still have these adventures that are magical and elemental even in today’s time where so much of that is compromised by phones and social media,” he says. From a microbudget filmmaker’s perspective, however, he laughs: “It’s also just cheaper to not make a period film.” 

When it came to the making of Riddle, Razooli explains that the film struggled to hit its stride in the first few days. When I asked if there were days when Razooli doubted himself or the project, he says, “Every day.” Due to limitations with scheduling and location, he reportedly was rewriting the script almost every day after shooting. “The third day was the first day we went up into the Uintah Mountains, which is one of my favorite places on earth,” he says, “and we had started to get into the rhythm of it, so at that point I was like, ‘Okay there’s some magic here for sure.’” 

Being a Summit county native, shooting so close to where Razooli grew up also calls back to another source of inspiration for the film: “As a kid I grew up on a mountain above Park City and I would play in the woods and go fly-fishing a lot. All [of] that good stuff that a mountain kid likes to do…that’s how I would say it shaped me. I hope to make more films there,” he says. On what makes Utah a unique place for filmmaking, he continues, “There is so much in Utah between the mountains in the Northern half and the red rocks in the Southern half. It’s a pretty versatile place.”

“As a kid I grew up on a mountain above Park City and I would play in the woods and go flyfishing a lot. All [of] that good stuff that a mountain kid likes to do … that’s how I would say it shaped me. I hope to make more films there.”

After enchanting audiences at Cannes and TIFF, what’s next for Razooli is a mystery. Like, a literal mystery. “I’m almost finished with my script for my next movie which is a Euro-crime romantic thriller set in Spain and France,” he explains. Razooli acknowledges the conceptual differences from his newest film, saying that “it’s a bit of a departure from Riddle of Fire, but it’s a very stylized world like Riddle.”

Be it neo-fairytale or Euro-crime, Razooli’s spellbinding knack for storytelling is sure to leave a mark on its viewer. Be sure to see Riddle of Fire when it hits the big screen on March 22.

Read more film coverage by Becca Ortmann here:
Slamdance Film Review: Sam’s World
Film Review: Orion in the Dark