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The hippie
event of the year is coming up and a bunch
of friends are not planning to miss a single second of
it. What they don't know is that a serial killer
dressed as former president Ronald Reagan is roaming
around in the woods where the concert is to be held.
And for hundreds of hippies, this will be the last
trip that they'll ever have.
I was expecting too much - there, I said it. I'm sure
that with a filled theatre and a bunch of horror fans
this could have been perceived as a great movie, but
it's really not all that great. The Tripper is a
mildly amusing slasher flick with a good cast and a
decent budget but there's certainly nothing special
about it. I'd love to be able to support David
Arquette's directorial debut more than I'm going to
but I have to be honest with what I feel towards this
movie - and it's not all good.
I'm sure that you all know the story by now - a killer
dressed as Ronald Reagan chops up hippies at a
concert. There's really nothing more to the story
than that and that a movie with a story that thin
has received so many rave reviews is just ridiculous.
Sure, it's pretty entertaining but I smell ass-kissing
because let's be brutally honest here, it's a slasher
flick with some mediocre gags and less gore than you'd
expect. What's even worse is that I'm as far from a
republican as you can get (I HATE Bush with a passion)
so if anyone should've liked this movie, it should
have been me. But again, I guess I was expecting too much.
David Arquette did however impress me with his obvious
knowledge of what camera angles work and how to make
a stereotypical cast seem interesting. The acting is
also above average and you have got to love Jaime
King who is clearly the star of the movie. In fact,
if it hadn't been for the terrific acting, the first
forty minutes or so would've been dreadfully slow
as the slashing doesn't kick off until very late into
the movie. There was also a scene that deserved a
full fiver due to the excellence of the hysteria and
the panic combined with a terrific soundtrack in here
and I do believe that had it toned down the silly gags
and amped up the horror, this could have been a creepy
and adrenaline-filled slasher flick.
Because isn't that just what we're looking for when
we watch horror flicks? An adrenaline-kick? At least
that's what I'm looking for and The Tripper didn't
offer much of that. It's a decent slasher flick but
it's not something I'd want to pay 9 bucks for to see
in a cinema. This has DTV written all over it and I'm
surprised David didn't see that himself. It almost
seemed as if he tried so hard to keep the pot-smokers
happy through and through that he forgot about his
core audience - the horror fans. I mean, seriously,
how many pot-smokers want to get high to a horror flick?
If you ask me that'd qualify as a real buzz-kill.
In the end, The Tripper probably is a whole lot more
amusing if you're stoned (which I'm sure that most of
the reviewers who gave this a rave review were at the
time that they saw it) but I personally wouldn't like
to get stoned while watching a horror flick - it just
doesn't add up to me. As a comedy, it's mildly amusing.
As a slasher flick, it's all right. That leaves us with
a forgettable slasher comedy which will hopefully
spawn a much better sequel.
We get a severed hand, some bloody stabbings, a dry
decapitation, an impalement, some guts and some more.
I was expecting it to be gorier.
Hippie music of course. The soundtrack was overall
surprisingly competent though I have to say.
Disappointing and forgettable slasher comedy with too
many mediocre gags and not enough adrenaline-pumping
slasher scenes. If you go in with low expectations
you'll probably come out quite pleased, but I went in
with high expectations and I found it to be very standard
slasher stuff. Nothing that we haven't seen before.
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