DVD Review: "The Tripper"

It seems that horror films with a political slant are becoming a new niche genre. With David Arquette's "The Tripper", Kevin Smith's upcoming "Red State" and the newly announced "The Ripper 2: The Burning Bush", they seem to have caught on. One can only hope that they will learn from the mistakes of this film and improve what could be an interesting sub-genre.

To state it simply, David Arquette is not a subtle man. In this, his directorial debut, a group of college-age hippies attend an outdoor music festival in the California Redwoods. Little do they know, a maniac who is obsessed with former President Ronald Reagan is stalking and killing them one by one. The concept is sound and, if put in the hands of a good director, could have been a very cool film-- especially if the antagonist was treated with any degree of seriousness. Unfortunately, this film was laid in the heavy hand of Arquette, who chose to take it more toward the horror/comedy genre. Trouble is, it wasn't very funny, failing to even taking advantage of numerous chances for great one-liners. And it certainly isn't scary. Creating a tense, scary movie takes skill-- a skill Arquette doesn't seem to possess.

What we end up with is a kinda funny, sorta scary debacle that would have never graced the silver screen of even one theater if not for Arquette's name being on it. I always feel that when a low budget horror film decides to go the route of "horror/comedy", it's usually a cop out. 9 times out of 10, the script is just not very scary and it seems like pushing the story to the absurdly funny makes up for it. Well, at least in this case, it certainly did not. To quote the man who inspired this film, "Facts are stubborn things", and the fact is: This movie stinks.

Score: 1 out of 5

View the trailer here.