The Red

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...

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.

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!

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.

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.