It is a horror movie truth universally acknowledged that if your killer bounces after its victims, you’d best play it for laughs. But that is something mystifyingly lost on Ryan Coonan’s slasher flick, which appears to have transformed the hench kangaroo meme into a feature-length film. Sadly, Rippy is no antipodean Cocaine Bear; after traversing wastes of maudlin backstory, it waits until the final five minutes before finally delivering some tongue-in-cheek sauce courtesy of a famous marsupial catchphrase.
Outback sheriff Maddie (Tess Haubrich) lives in the shadow of her late, toast-of-the-town cop father, who was also a high-school sports champion and war hero. (She saves us having to work this out by telling us off the bat in voiceover.) When his wild-eyed buddy Schmitty (Michael Biehn) wanders in babbling about a humongous homicidal joey, and two drunks wind up chop-sueyed in the brush, it seems like a case of murders in the ’roo morgue. But, convinced by Schmitty’s ex (Angie Milliken) not to trust his ravings, Maddie homes in on a more rational suspect: an ex-con at the local mine (a brief cameo from Mad Max’s Nathan Jones).
Prancing around in his dressing gown and twitching like a cross between Jack Sparrow and Life of Brian’s mad preacher, Biehn is the only one who seems to comprehend the innate ludicrousness of the premise. Unfortunately, he’s left hanging in the wind by Coonan and Richard Barcarcicchio’s script, which gives us earnestness where none is needed, stringing out Maddie’s inferiority complex like it’s an Oprah special. Inadvertently sending seven more people off to needless deaths, she doesn’t exactly do her own self-esteem any favours in that regard.
The butchery, when it comes, is surprisingly perfunctory and lacklustre. The quip vacuum is simply unforgivable; not even a “You’re going to ’roo the day!”. An Ozploitation outing to forget.
• Rippy is on digital platforms from 30 December.
