Rippy

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.

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.

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.

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.

Where do I begin with this dreadfull pos?

Don't expect a comedy here. The movie takes itself seriously and the only laughs to be had are dumb plot scenes, oh and the God awful CGI that looks fresh out of 1997.

The plot should just be there is a giant killer kangaroo on the loose killing humans. So they fight back. That's all that should be needed. Instead it forces you to watch a pointless plot of the local cop whose father died and he was the towns hero zzzzzz. His daughter (the cop) is always going on about trying to live up to his legacy, or some stupid pointless thing, it bored me to death so much I just stopped paying it any attention and I dont know or care what the stupid outcome of it was in the end, because it was utterly pointless.

I heard toilets flushing when multiple times this cop ignores the peril dangers and just stops to worry about her dead father rather than the danger their in. Who wrote this (what gets flushed)?

Then there's the killer kangaroo in all its horrible CGI glory. What's even worse is this kangaroo changes size in every shot. One moment it looks average, then it's 8 feet tall, then back to 5. Whoever did the CGI is no professional, and I've seen amatuers do 1000 times better work on personal YouTube videos.

Mix all that in with side characters all muttering about things trying to make you feel for their past or something, and you've got a cocktail for the worst film out of Australia in years.

It'd have been better to use quick cuts, shadows, and off screen imagination with a couple of puppet close ups rather than try to sell this CGI disaster amongst pointless, and I mean POINTLESS dialogue between miserable characters and it's dumb plots.

The horror aspect falls completely flat. Never any sense of danger, nothing gripping, and not even any cool or memorable kill scenes. One moment a killer kangaroos after them, then they're casually walking home, then they're fearing the roo might be outside.... MAKE UP YOUR MIND writers.

My biggest question is how did they get Kyle Reese into this film, and why did he agree to be in it? I bet he regrets agreeing to it now.

I can't think of any reason to ever suggest to someone to check this film out. It's not even one of those 'it's so bad' ones. It just has NOTHING to offer, no redeemable qualities and I wouldn't even waste film students time saying this is a movie to watch as an example of how not to make a movie. It's just not worth anyone's attention in any way, shape, or form. It's just pathetic. Don't bother with it.