The Ranger review: Frightfest opens with a bang with Jenn Wexler’s punk-rock slasher The Ranger.
The Ranger review by Kat Hughes.
The Ranger Review
The Ranger opens this year’s Frightfest; directed by Jenn Wexler the film is a post-modern, punk-rock feminist take on the eighties slasher movie. After a night partying gets out of hand, and an altercation with the law, a group of punks have no choice but to look for somewhere to lie low. Their hideout of choice is the inherited cabin in the woods belonging to Chelsea (Chloe Levine). Whilst the rest of the gang get down to partying, Chelsea struggles with being back in the holiday home of her youth, the place where her uncle tragically died. The group’s troubles are far from over, however, when their raucous behavior soon finds them on the wrong side of the local park ranger. One who takes his position deadly seriously.
The Ranger Review
At barely eighty minutes long, Wexler packs a lot of story, emotion, and death into The Ranger. The film whistles past at almost breakneck speed. Balancing the aforementioned elements is a tricky job, but Wexler pulls it off with a masterful amount of skill. There’s much more going on beneath what, on the surface, could be seen as just another eighties throwback stalk and slash. Here our hunter has a driven and determined purpose that’s more than just punishing teens for pre-marital sex and partying too much. Our heroine Chelsea too, is more than just the archetypal final girl. She’s smart, cunning and just as capable and dangerous as her foe, more than earning her moniker of little wolf. She also has such an emotional complexity that she appears genuinely real, far more so than the typical two-dimensional virginal bookworm so beloved by the tropes. As emotionally packed as The Ranger is, it never truly loses its wry sense of fun; it is a slasher after all. The deaths are bracingly brutal. Get ready for axes to throats, bear traps and severed limbs. Wexler certainly isn’t afraid of throwing the red stuff around.
Hidden within The Ranger are some great performances. Chloe Levine’s Chelsea is reminiscent of that of Anya Taylor Joy’s in Split. She has an intricate balance of wide-eyed innocence and fearless warrior going on within her character. Jeremy Holm’s turn as the ranger is creepy and unnerving. Holm plays him as somewhere between Ned Flanders, Patrick Bateman, and an emotionless Terminator cyborg. It’s a mix that keeps the viewer on the back foot, you never quite know whether to laugh at him or cower in-front of him.
The Ranger Review
The film is set in the eighties, and our main cast of characters aligning themselves with the punk movement, means that we get to see a lot of fashion and music born from that era. Each of our clan identifies as a slightly different version of punk, making it easy for the audience to follow who is who. There’s also a smattering of coloured hair dyes, the pink and blue of Chelsea and Amber’s hair really pops against the backdrop of the muted woodscape. Then there’s the kick-ass punk and synth soundtrack that beats and pulsates, revving the audience’s adrenaline levels skywards. There’s also the rather odd (though it soon becomes clear why) inclusion of Charlie Rich’s The Most Beautiful Girl. Trust me, after watching The Ranger, you’ll never hear it in the same way again.
Green Room set in Jason Voorhees’ stomping ground, The Ranger will have you on the edge of your seat. Gore-soaked fun with an emotional core and kick-ass score, The Ranger is sure to get you all revved up for the rest of Frightfest.
The Ranger review by Kat Hughes, August 2018.
The Ranger screened as part of Arrow Video Frightfest 2018.
