Rippy - Das Killerkänguru

I must be honest, I didn't expect much going into 'Rippy', thinking it was going to be a cheap B-movie. It probably didn't have a big budget, but the film surprised me with good cinematography, good performances, and good make-up.

Maddy's dad was a local hero. Now she is trying to live up to his legacy, and she is put to the test when bodies start turning up - ripped to shreds. When Schmitty (Michael Biehn) tells her about a giant kangaroo, she doesn't believe him. But when more bodies turn up, and Maddy narrowly escapes an attack by the creature, she puts together a hunting party.

The back story about Maddy's father probably wasn't necessary, but I suppose they wanted a tragic back story in order for the viewer to root even more for our protagonist. 'Rippy' is a good old-fashioned creature feature with a simple premise. Although there are comedic elements, this is by all means a horror, with some creepy moments. Being such a short film (83 minutes) it was fast-paced and I enjoyed every moment.

'Rippy' gave me a sense of 'Razorback' meets 'An American Werewolf in London', and I had a bloody good time with it!

Aka The Red... A remote community in the Australian outback is being hunted by a killer. Young sheriff Maddie struggles to deal with the situation. It gets more shocking when the killer turns out to be a seemingly invincible giant zombie kangaroo.

The premise is dumb. The CGI kangaroo looks dumb. At least, the zombie part has a good ending. This could have been like Cujo or steer fully into camp. There just isn't anything here. None of the characters are that compelling. The sheriff is almost interesting, but I couldn't pay attention to the others. This is a small B-horror that fails to do more.

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.

Rippy should have been Australia's answer to Cocaine Bear-a wild, blood-soaked, tongue-in-cheek marsupial massacre. Instead, it hops straight into the realm of the forgettable, weighed down by cringe-inducing earnestness, limp storytelling, and a complete lack of self-awareness.

Ryan Coonan's kangaroo slasher arrives with a killer concept: a jacked-up joey goes rogue in the Outback. Sounds like campy gold, right? Wrong. Instead of leaning into the absurdity, Rippy insists on dragging viewers through a desert of maudlin backstory, family trauma, and dead-serious exposition. You'll spend 85% of the runtime wondering if someone accidentally swapped the script with an abandoned Outback soap opera.

Tess Haubrich plays Maddie, a haunted sheriff with daddy issues so cliché they should've come with a warning label. The film opens with her narrating her dead father's legacy like a eulogy from a bad Hallmark movie. It doesn't get better. The emotional weight is forced, unearned, and entirely unnecessary in a film about a murderous kangaroo.

Michael Biehn, bless him, is the only one who understands the assignment. Playing Schmitty, a deranged, bathrobe-wearing bush prophet, he twitches, rants, and throws himself into the ridiculousness with abandon. Unfortunately, the script abandons him, leaving him stranded in a movie that's too embarrassed to be what it should've been: fun.

The kills? Meh. The gore? Minimal. The jokes? Non-existent. Not even a single half-decent pun-no "roo the day," no "marsupial mayhem," not even a cheeky nod to Skippy. When your monster is a murderous kangaroo, you owe the audience at least some wink-wink carnage. But Rippy squanders every opportunity to lean into Ozploitation chaos.

By the time the film finally delivers a campy one-liner in the closing minutes, it's too little, too late. You don't make a killer kangaroo movie and spend 90 minutes pretending you're making Mystic River.

To think I spent $11.20 on my Uber trip on All Hallows Eve to get to Limelight Cinemas just to support the Australian film industry by watching "The Red" also known stateside as "Rippy".

It was more laughs and for all the wrong reasons than horror I experienced during this almost 90 minutes screening.

The facts is some third world countries are making better horror movies than the so-called lucky country, Australia, in 2024.

Russell Mulchays' "Razorback" was a better monster horror movie and it was made 40 bloody years ago before CGI.

No, this movie relied on puppeteers in a Roo costume to scare us...what a joke!

No ones going to have a moviegasm watching "Rippy" the darn big bush kangaroo chomp his way through the imaginary mining township of Axehead.

One of the filmmakers biggest mistakes was revealing the zombie marsupial only seconds into the movie.

Clearly the word suspense isn't in their Funk & Wagnalls.

Made on a paltry 7.5 million dollar budget (costume budget for Olivia Rodrigo's World Tour) it showed.

Just like "Razorback" we had to hire an American for one of the lead roles to sell this OS.

Michael Biehn ("Aliens") as "Schmitty" is supposed to be a broken down Vietnam veteran, even though my math has him as 15 years of age in 1971 as he recounts his war stories.

"Rippy" had the chance to be scary and humorous, but under first time feature film director Ryan Coonan, failed on both counts.

Even though it's based on a short he created called, "Waterborne".

This treatment needed a few more drafts before being green lit.

"The Red" or as the Germans say whilst eating sauerkraut "Das Killerkangaru" was filmed in Queensland: around Brisbane, Cracow and Old Petrie Town.

At least these towns might benefit from the handful of film location tourists who follow this stuff.

"The Red" also lacked a killer soundtrack, which I might just make a Spotify playlist for, because I can...full of Aussie bangers (code for hits).

Zombie Roo "Rippy" was no ordinary bush kangaroo and when Rippy goes "Rogue" (another better Aussie horror flick) all hell breaks loose and you don't want to be a runner or a drunk miner after dark.

The trailer contains the best 2 minutes of this horror flick.

The towns cop gives birth to a genius plan in the final showdown, "I'm gonna blow the fu&@ers brains out!" Why that would work when guns and bullets have been useless till now amused me.

Wouldn't you be better to use an old axe hanging in the Fire &Axe pub?

The working title for "The Red" was "Zombieroo" according to Biehn, but that doesn't make it any better because this movie takes itself way too seriously and misses the campy horror cult flick it could have become.

Instead it's relegated to the skinny decaf cappuccino or why bother basket.

It's not even a "so bad it's good film".

Continuity is a disaster, the script blows chunks and First Nations actor Aaron Pedersen couldn't save it.

My love of Zombie movies is prolific, but this was a missed opportunity.

Shame because I was rooting for another great Australian camp fire story for future generations to enjoy too!