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‘The Ranger’ Is The Punk Slasher Movie We Needed

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The slasher movie, for all its fun, has often been noted for carrying conservative overtones, especially prominent in the heat of the sub-genre in the 1980’s. The victims usually being rebellious teens who smoke, drink, have pre-marital sex and disregard authority and the rules, leading them to an untimely and often gruesome demise with the ‘final’ girl usually being the pure member of the group. Now comes a slasher movie where the entire cast are delinquents fighting a psychotic authority figure in Jenn Wexler’s The Ranger!

The crew. From Left To Right: Abe (Bubba Weiler), Jerk (Jeremy Pope), Garth (Granit Lahu), and Amber (Amanda Grace Benitez)

The story follows Chelsea (Chloe Levine) as she takes her punk friends to her family’s old cabin in the woods so they can evade the police after her boyfriend Garth (Granit Lahu) stabs a cop. The gang has a bag of drugs, punk music, shop-lifted food, and enough beer to last. But they couldn’t foresee their biggest obstacle being one psychotically overzealous Park Ranger (Jeremy Holm) who doesn’t take kindly to miscreants running amok in his woods…

 

At its core, The Ranger is a traditional slasher film. You got teens going out into the forest only to encounter a crazed killer who starts picking them off one-by-one for their perceived misdeeds. But it is in fact more than that. It’s the 80’s-set slasher Green Room evocative of Return Of The Living Dead (with a few homages) with a full-on cast of punk rockers in a life or death battle with an insane authority figure. On that note, Jeremy Holm really stands out as the titular Ranger.

THE RANGER poster. Image via IMDB

Affable, kindly, and dead serious about the rules and regulations of ‘his’ mountain. He’s in total contrast to our group of punks, appearing in the beginning prologue set to Charlie Rich’s pop-country hit “The Most Beautiful Girl” in opposition to the hardcore punk soundtrack and themes of the main cast. But he meets all the staples of slasher villains that have come before him. Slaughtering delinquents for minor transgressions while spouting one-liners and using his ranger theme and gear to deadly and brutal ends. Every scene he emerges from the woods like the forest’s ghoulish guardian is always a memorable one. More Psycho Cop than Freddy Krueger, but with the outdoors themes of Jason Voorhees and the killer of The Final Terror. An unhinged naturalist who seems obsessed with ‘survival of the fittest’, and Chelsea in particular.

Chelsea (Chloe Levine)

Chelsea herself stands out as our lead. She shares the same rebellious nature of her friends, but even she is disgusted by their shallow disdain for the nature around her family’s cabin. Deriding them for spray painting trees and setting unsafe bonfires, she shares more qualities with the ranger than she’d care to admit. She’s not afraid to speak her mind, even when she comes into conflict with her friends. Questioning Garth’s plans and how they’re going to outrun the law. She’s resourceful and knows her way in the wilderness with secrets about her past to the cabin and The Ranger to be seen.

Jerk (Jeremy Pope)

The rest of the punk crew are interesting in their own ways. Jerk (Jeremy Pope) and Abe (Bubba Weiler) are a gay couple who genuinely love and care for one another, in stark contrast to Chelsea and Garth’s often tense relationship. Amber (Amanda Grace Benitez) is the more laid back punk, contrasting Chelsea in both hair and attitude. The cast does well in displaying their friendship through the movie as they go from the raided punk show to the van and into the woods. Which makes it genuinely heartfelt when tragedy and horror befalls them. The cast of characters are actual characters with relationships with one another that shows they do truly care about one another, a lynchpin that is sadly absent from many films of the genre. Director Jenn Wexler has made a slasher movie that absolutely feels genuine in everything from story to tone. Though genre throwback movies are a dime-a-dozen nowadays, The Ranger treats the slasher themes and punk aesthetic respectfully, with comedy mainly coming from it, instead of at it.

 

Overall, if you’re looking for something that feels like it came from the horror heydays of the eighties, The Ranger comes recommended. The Ranger is in select theaters in New York and will be hitting VOD and Digital in September.

 

Image via IMDB

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The Pope’s Exorcist Officially Announces New Sequel

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The Pope’s Exorcist is one of those films that’s just fun to watch. It isn’t the most terrifying film around, but there’s something about Russel Crow (Gladiator) playing a wise cracking Catholic priest that just feels right.

Screen Gems seems to agree with this assessment, as they have just officially announced that The Pope’s Exorcist sequel is in the works. It makes sense that Screen Gems would want to keep this franchise going, considering the first film scared up almost $80 million with a budget of only $18 million.

The Pope's Exorcist
The Pope’s Exorcist

According to Crow, there may even be a The Pope’s Exorcist trilogy in the works. However, recent changes with the studio may have put the third film on hold. In a sit-down with The Six O’Clock Show, Crow gave the following statement about the project.

“Well that’s in discussion at the moment. The producers originally got the kick off from the studio not just for one sequel but for two. But there’s been a change of studio heads at the moment, so that’s going around in a few circles. But very definitely, man. We set that character up that you could take him out and put him into a lot of different circumstances.”

Crow has also stated that film’s source material involves twelve separate books. This would allow the studio to take the story in all kinds of directions. With that much source material, The Pope’s Exorcist could even rival The Conjuring Universe.

Only the future will tell what becomes of The Pope’s Exorcist. But as always, more horror is always a good thing.

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New ‘Faces of Death’ Remake Will Be Rated R For “Strong Bloody Violence and Gore”

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In a move that should surprise absolutely no one, the Faces of Death reboot has been given an R rating from the MPA. Why has the film been given this rating? For strong bloody violence, gore, sexual content, nudity, language, and drug use, of course.

What else would you expect from a Faces of Death reboot? It would honestly be alarming if the film received anything less than an R rating.

Faces of death
Faces of Death

For those unaware, the original Faces of Death film released in 1978 and promised viewers video evidence of real deaths. Of course, this was just a marketing gimmick. Promoting a real snuff film would be a terrible idea.

But the gimmick worked, and franchise lived on in infamy. The Faces of Death reboot is hoping to gain the same amount of viral sensation as its predecessor. Isa Mazzei (Cam) and Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) will spearhead this new addition.

The hope is that this reboot will do well enough to recreate the infamous franchise for a new audience. While we don’t know much about the film at this point, but a joint statement from Mazzei and Goldhaber gives us the following info on the plot.

“Faces of Death was one of the first viral video tapes, and we are so lucky to be able to use it as a jumping off point for this exploration of cycles of violence and the way they perpetuate themselves online.”

“The new plot revolves around a female moderator of a YouTube-like website, whose job is to weed out offensive and violent content and who herself is recovering from a serious trauma, that stumbles across a group that is recreating the murders from the original film. But in the story primed for the digital age and age of online misinformation, the question faced is are the murders real or fake?”

The reboot will have some bloody shoes to fill. But from the looks of it, this iconic franchise is in good hands. Unfortunately, the film does not have a release date at this time.

That’s all the information we have at this time. Make sure to check back here for more news and updates.

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Panic Fest 2024 Review: ‘The Ceremony Is About To Begin’

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People will look for answers and belonging in the darkest places and the darkest people. The Osiris Collective is a commune predicated upon ancient Egyptian theology and was run by the mysterious Father Osiris. The group boasted dozens of members, each forgoing their old lives for one held in the Egyptian themed land owned by Osiris in Northern California. But the good times take a turn for the worst when in 2018, an upstart member of the collective named Anubis (Chad Westbrook Hinds) reports Osiris disappearing while mountain climbing and declaring himself the new leader. A schism ensued with many members leaving the cult under Anubis’ unhinged leadership. A documentary is being made by a young man named Keith (John Laird) whose fixation with The Osiris Collective stems from his girlfriend Maddy leaving him for the group several years ago. When Keith gets invited to document the commune by Anubis himself, he decides to investigate, only to get wrapped up in horrors he couldn’t even imagine…

The Ceremony Is About To Begin is the latest genre twisting horror film from Red Snow‘s Sean Nichols Lynch. This time tackling cultist horror along with a mockumentary style and the Egyptian mythology theme for the cherry on top. I was a big fan of Red Snow‘s subversiveness of the vampire romance sub-genre and was excited to see what this take would bring. While the movie has some interesting ideas and a decent tension between the meek Keith and the erratic Anubis, it just doesn’t exactly thread everything together in a succinct fashion.

The story begins with a true crime documentary style interviewing former members of The Osiris Collective and sets-up what led the cult to where it is now. This aspect of the storyline, especially Keith’s own personal interest in the cult, made it an interesting plotline. But aside from some clips later on, it doesn’t play as much a factor. The focus is largely on the dynamic between Anubis and Keith, which is toxic to put it lightly. Interestingly, Chad Westbrook Hinds and John Lairds are both credited as writers on The Ceremony Is About To Begin and definitely feel like they’re putting their all into these characters. Anubis is the very definition of a cult leader. Charismatic, philosophical, whimsical, and threateningly dangerous at the drop of a hat.

Yet strangely, the commune is deserted of all cult members. Creating a ghost town that only amps up the danger as Keith documents Anubis’ alleged utopia. A lot of the back and forth between them drags at times as they struggle for control and Anubis keeps continuing to convince Keith to stick around despite the threatening situation. This does lead to a pretty fun and bloody finale that fully leans into mummy horror.

Overall, despite meandering and having a bit of a slow pace, The ceremony Is About To Begin is a fairly entertaining cult, found footage, and mummy horror hybrid. If you want mummies, it delivers on mummies!

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