The Ranger (2018)

The Ranger: Directed by Jenn Wexler. With Chloë Levine, Jeremy Holm, Granit Lahu, Jeremy Pope. Teen punks, on the run from the cops and hiding out in the woods, come up against the local authority – an unhinged park ranger with an axe to grind.

“I added u0026quot;The Rangeru0026quot; straight to my watchlist, because I instantly liked the premise of a psychopathic National Park Ranger. Some of the best slashers of the 1980s took place in the backwoods, but the killers were always toothless rednecks or cannibalistic inbred families, so this could have been an interesting and original new angle, especially because the film (like so many others nowadays) supposedly also takes place in the 80s. But alas, u0026quot;The Rangeru0026quot; never fully lives up to its potential despite the cool titular killer and an adequate performance by Jeremy Holm, and thatu0026#39;s principally because co-writer/director Jenn Wexler is seemingly more interested in a bunch of pathetic punkers and atrocious loud music than in atmosphere or scenery. Running from the police after an idiotic and unnecessary incident at a punk club, five vexatious teenagers seek shelter in a cabin in the middle of a National Park. One of them, the introvert Chelsea, spent much of her childhood vacations here with her uncle, and her own dark secrets from the past gradually come back to the surface. Meanwhile, the psychopathic Park Ranger ensures that Chelseau0026#39;s disrespectful and arrogant friends receive the excruciatingly painful deaths they deserve. u0026quot;The Rangeru0026quot; is a textbook and thus unmemorable slasher that sadly doesnu0026#39;t make proper use of the locations, the villain, the numerous potential slash-methods or the 80s setting. The grim film poster remains by far the best asset of the entire production.”