Rippy

The bizarre tale of a zombie kangaroo terrorising a rural Australian village is told in Ryan Coonan's Australian horror film, which you may also interpret as a dark comedy. The movie, which is primarily set at night in the small town of Axehead, stars Tess Haubrich as Sheriff Maddy, a young police officer attempting to carry on her late father's legacy. The townspeople are ripped to pieces by a string of horrific incidents just as she is beginning to feel overwhelmed by the demands of her work. Before it's too late, Maddy and her quirky Uncle Schmitty-played by seasoned actor Michael Biehn-must try to halt the zombie attacker. As they investigate, they find that Rippy, a massive undead kangaroo on the loose, is the real culprit. Hold on tight as we embark on this strange Australian journey into the mayhem of the outback with undead kangaroos. The strange idea alone makes it worth seeing, but the uneven execution makes it unsatisfactory. Rippy the zombie roo can occasionally be legitimately unsettling and unsettling, but the slapstick required to strike a balance between comedy and horror can clash with heavier, more serious components. The mood is continuously changed by this schizophrenic technique, with differing results. Coonan obviously did his research since Rippy captures the feel of rural Australia. The remote Outback location, complete with dusty country roads and dilapidated farmhouses illuminated by flickering porch lighting, feels genuine. But the erratic CGI is startling and takes us straight out of the eerie countryside. Rippy himself frequently looks more like a rubber Halloween costume than a realistic zombie. Any sense of menace is undermined by the floating fakeness when he punches or rushes with teeth and claw. It's also unfortunate because gore effects that use real makeup were not bad. Gave it a half star extra for being an Australian film...

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Rippy, or The Red as the title card suggests, is NOT the horror-comedy it's being marketed as. Instead, it's an incredibly dull film that borrows heavily from Jaws but fails miserably at executing any of the key plot points. The tone is inconsistent, and the script is dreadful. Michael Biehn's character swings between cartoonish and trying to channel Robert Shaw, complete with their own cringe-worthy version of the USS Indianapolis scene. Rather than focusing on the zombie kangaroo-barely featured in the film-we're subjected to a family drama about a cop whose alcoholic father's past is bizarrely glossed over by the whole town. Despite the credits listing a puppeteering team, every kangaroo scene looks like a low-quality video game cutscene with terrible color grading that doesn't match the surrounding shots. There's nothing redeeming about this film. Don't waste your money-it's a complete lemon with zero entertainment value.

First off, the trailer is not really a good indication of what to expect from Rippy (aka The Red), which seems to imply it is a comedy horror movie (like 2014's Zombeavers), but in fact the material is played almost entirely straight. The closest film that springs to mind is another Australian film, Razorback from 1984 in which a giant boar terrorises an Australian community. Here, it's a zombie(!) Red Kangaroo that terrorises a small Australian mining town. Razorback is the better film. Michael Biehn is hopelessly miscast (although at least he does not attempt an Aussie accent), and his apparent overacting (particularly during the first act) suggests he thought he was making a different kind of film. The lead, Tess Haubrich, who plays the small-town cop Maddy who lives in the shadow of her father's legacy, does the best she can with what she was given. This is clearly a low budget film, and the dodgy cgi and practical effects could definitely have used some more money thrown at it. The movie tried but failed to bite off more than it can roo.

Of course I had to sit down and watch the 2024 horror comedy "The Red" (aka "Rippy") when I stumbled upon it by random chance. I mean, a horror comedy with zombie kangaroos, that just sounds like a blast, especially if it was going to be anything like the 2006 horror comedy "Black Sheep" or the 2014 "Zombeavers". Writers Richard Barcaricchio and Ryan Coonan certainly had an interesting concept for the movie here, but ultimately the storyline proved to be bland, lackluster and generic. So it wasn't as if the writers revolutionized the horror genre, nor bring anything new to the genre, aside from zombie kangaroos; but those you hardly get to see, so... I found the narrative boring and uneventful, and it was a disappointing movie to sit through, to be bluntly honest. I wanted to like "The Red", I really did, but there just wasn't anything to win me over. While "The Red" is listed as a horror comedy, I have to say that the movie was frightfully devoid of anything funny. So this was actually straight up a horror movie. A bit disappointing actually. Initially I was thrilled to see that the movie had Michael Biehn in a leading role. In fact, he was actually the only face on the screen that I was familiar with. I will say, however, that the acting performances in the movie were good. Personally I don't get why they opted to go for Michael Biehn for this role, as his American accent sort of clashed with the rest of the Australian accents from the other performers. Visually then the movie was not particularly impressive. Most of the scenes take place in the dark, and director Ryan Coonan rarely lets you see anything that involves the zombie kangaroos. Another disappointment, to be bluntly honest. That whole thing with keeping scenes in the dark and leaving the imagery up to the audience belongs in the 1980s. When I sit down and watch a horror movie, of course I want to see the gory mayhem and the creature effects. I will say, that the little gore that was in "The Red" was actually good, and it helped lift up the movie a notch. All in all, I found "The Red" to be a big disappointment. But I am sure that there should be an audience out there for a movie such as this. This is not a movie that will find its way back to my screen a second time. My rating of director Ryan Coonan's 2024 movie "The Red" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

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Following a string of bizarre deaths, the head of a small town's local wildlife preservation unit tries to put the strained relationship with her dead father aside to deal with the strange animal responsible, and when they discover the culprit to be a zombified kangaroo tries to stop it. This was a fun if somewhat problematic creature feature. The main feature of this one is the rather strong setup that allows for a nice bit of world-building inside this community. Featuring the usual assortment of quirky small-town residents that populate this kind of story with the group of locals that are fully fleshed-out and lived in who know each other quite well, this allows for a great supporting group that can bend around the central premise of the relationship issues causing a strain to her job. Trying to overcome the stigma of what happened in the past with the struggle of trying to keep the town safe during this latest series of attacks, this sets up a compelling mystery following the bizarre attacks and some immensely fun action in the second half that gives this a lot to like. There are some big factors that hold this one down. One of the biggest detrimental features is the clear lack of appropriate tone throughout here where it takes itself way too seriously for what's going on. The idea of such an audacious premise involving a zombified kangaroo running loose in a small town community of quirky locals requires such a wild series of setpieces to constantly up the ante with how the creature plays out the rampage. However, here we get far too much melodrama about the family relationship that takes up the centerpiece of the film where it's really hard to stay invested in the storyline when it doesn't focus on the killer kangaroo rampaging across town that it really struggles to maintain the wildness of what's going on. The other big drawback to this one is the ensuing lack of creature action that comes about when it does decide to focus on the creature action. Several scenes are chilling in their concept and setup, mainly involving the team out in the wilderness who get the hint that something is out there but not sure if anything's happening that tends to dominate the admittedly fun second half, but that's the extent of this one. This one never lets the wild action promised in the setup come to fruition and far too many of the previous rampage scenes are done off-screen rather than deal with anything on-screen as the kills are barely featured until the end and a majority are brief flashes rather than anything else. These factors are all enough to bring this one down. Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.