The Red

Actually the trailer tells you the whole movie.

And it is really about some zombie kangaroo who kills a lot of people in the Australian Outback.

It sounds like a hilarious, funny horror comedy you'd enjoy watching and have a good laugh at - but noooo.

The biggest flaw of that kangaroo zombie flick is that it totally wastes that opportunity and tries to be an earnest shocker movie.

But that does not work, because while the movie takes itself way too seriously and tries to scare you, it fails miserably because once "Rippy" the zombie kangaroo enters the scene you can not stop laughing at all. :)

And that's not only because the whole idea is so silly but because they used some very cheap and obvious CGI for "Rippy".

"Look - it's Rippy the zombie kangaroo out of my old computer I made with the help of the book "Cheap CGI zombie kangaroo for dummies" :)

The movie never gets any good it isn't even so bad it is almost good.

Unfortunately it isn't really worth watching.

I almost felt sad for poor ol' Rippy, who desperately tries to scare you, but you always end up laughing about it.

And I was really looking forward to watching a funny, braindead movie with the typical down under humor - but nooo - instead I got "Rippy" the serious serial killer movie about a zombie kangaroo.

Facepalm!

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.

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.

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!