User reviews

Molly Keller (A. J. Cook), the only survivor of a violent massacre when she was sixteen, is now a student enrolled in a forensic science course at Berkeley. When her fellow classmates start dying at the hands of a mystery killer, who is following the modus operandi of the infamous Jack the Ripper, she suspects that the murderer from her past is back to finish the job.

Molly and the remaining students from her study group pool their profiling talents in an attempt to discover the identity of the maniac.

Director John Eyres directs this slab of stalk 'n slash with both eyes firmly fixed on the teen market, and what may have been a nice addition to the genre becomes an annoying and unwatchable piece of garbage due to its MTV trappings. So obnoxious are the trendy narcissistic teens that make up teacher Marshall Kane's (Bruce Payne) class of wannabe Clarice Starlings, that you'll find yourself rooting for the killer. Main character Molly is perhaps the most annoying character of all; her emotionally troubled, spunky, grunge-chic heroine is carefully designed to appeal to the widest possible teenage demographic; angst-ridden loners, trendy fashion followers, horny guys—she's supposed to appeal to them all. Well I'm not a teenager anymore, and I hated her with a passion! And while I'm having a rant about the students, could someone please explain to me how they all became so damn erudite. From hacking into a police computer undetected, to conducting an autopsy, to fixing a satellite dish, nothing seemed to be beyond their capabilities.

And now onto the death scenes. The first murder is the most impressive—a multiple stabbing followed by defenestration—and it is also the bloodiest. The rest of the killings are relatively gore free and disappointing. The nastiest deaths actually occur by accident, when two characters fall in front of the whirring buzz blades of a sawmill.

Toward the end of this drivel, which at 115 minutes is way too long, I gave up following the ludicrous plot. There was some rubbish about the victims sharing the same initials as those killed by Jack the Ripper, a pointless (non-explicit) sex scene, and various characters were revealed as red herrings. The finale is completely confusing and I ended up unsure as to who the killer really was.

Apparently, the director deliberately wanted the ending to be ambiguous, with the viewer making their own mind up about who was responsible. Well I'm not going to be ambiguous about what I think of this film—it was awful.

Girl-running-in-a-thunderstorm-with-killer-close-behind-girl-trips killer-gets-her kind of story. Lots of blood, no originality. One would expect more from a movie which promises serial psycho killers copying Jack the Ripper. No real motivation for the blood bath, least of all a psychological one. Except for the ending which at least creates a little bit of confusion, one could predict every scene at least 10 minutes before it unfolds. Everything in this movie has been done, redone and overdone. It's like watching Scary Movie and taking it seriously. It's been a real disappointment. Where are the calculated blood thirsty psycho killers? What happened to movies like Seven or Silence of the Lambs, with original plots and motifs? Because personally I'm tired of watching helpless blonds being butchered like cattle while instead of defending themselves they scream in agony and then always manage to trip and fall.

Here's a list of things Ripper gets wrong:

1) It's a post-Scream slasher 2) It's full of terrible music and horrible quick-cut editing 3) It's one hour and forty-five minutes long (A slasher film!) 4) With the exception of Bruce Payne and Jurgen Protchnow, the acting is terrible

And if you think I'm going to say 'in spite of this, I liked it' then you're wrong. It was crap!

After a promising pre-credits sequence where a girl named Molly survives a serial killer's rampage, we're thrown right into smart arse territory as we see our victims are all part of a college class who are studying murderers, or something. We've got our post-Scream list of morons here: goth-like Molly who keeps her past a secret, Marissa (Kelly Brook!), who's the nymph, twitchy red herring guy, the dark stud guy, the wisecracking guy, and the bitch, who hates Molly and serves to introduce an unneeded teeny drama element to the proceedings. Their teacher is Bruce Payne, an ex-FBI profiler who also has a dark secret. Everyone, with the exception of the twitchy guy, is confident and annoying.

We run slap bang into the film's main problem here: too much talking! We get a lot of babble about serial killers (looks at watch), characters establishing themselves (nods off), and a fake killing instigated by the teacher (pffft). Eventually we get to the first killing, which, for anyone who sat through The Big Breakfast on British television, is mercifully Kelly Brook. She's stabbed to death in a nightclub in a way that turns out to be exactly the same way Jack the Ripper killed his first victim (more lengthy discussions about Jack the Ripper here, and indeed this goes on throughout the film).

To cut a very long story short (there are only two killings in the first hour!), one of the students (or maybe the teacher) is killing everyone else in the way Jack the Ripper killed his victims. Turns out all the students have the same initials as the victims of Jack (how stupid is that?) so they know who's going to be next. Throw in some Dawson's Creek drama (Molly likes the stud, but the Bitch tries to derail things), some truly daft contrivances (the initials thing, Molly being able to hack the police database) and a severe lack of gore and nudity, and you have a truly rubbish slasher flick. What drags this film way, way down is the deadly serious tone, the crappy music (nu-metal, some emo style crap) and the acting of the younger cast. Check out Molly's tantrum which seems to involve throwing cushions around and spray painting!

Also, the 'killing Jack the Ripper style' plot is plainly dropped after the first two kills (unless Jack the Ripper used a bandsaw and a hatchet), plus the ending is completely daft and annoying.

It is well made enough, but the post-Scream era wasn't a great time for slasher films. What Scream missed was that, yes, the older films had clichés, and were predictable, but they were fun! Don't believe me: try Pieces (1982), Don't Open Till Christmas (1984), and any other Sleepaway Camp films. Much better.

Avoid!

This film opens with a quite effective and cinematic first sequence, promising to be an atmospheric & frightening horror viewing experience.

Then it is rapidly apparent within seconds of the following scene that this will not be the case.

What we get instead is an excruciatingly dated (to an embarrassing degree) 90's rock video, where even the hairstyles are irritating.

Every character has a tiresome grungy rebellious attitude with a highly charged sexuality.

Throughout the endlessly cliche-ridden plot, we are bombarded with a playlist of generic 90's music that seems to take center stage.

Let's not also forget to point out that the improbability factor is turned up to eleven or that it features quite an unwelcome 'moment' between a young woman & her teacher.

They seem to be clutching at straws for a satisfactory conclusion & settle on quite a gimmicky one.