THE RANGER

(director/writer: Jenn Wexler; screenwriter: Giaco Furino; cinematographer: James Siewert; editors: Abbey Killheffer/Jenn Wexler; music: Wade MacNeil, Andrew Gordon Macpherson; cast: Cloe Levine (Chelsea), Jeté Laurence (Young Chelsea), Jeremy Holm (The Ranger), Granit Lahu (Garth), Jeremy Pope (Jerk), Bubba Weiler (Abe), Nocholas Tucci (Flesh), Amanda Grace Benitez (Amber), Larry Fessenden (Uncle Pete); Runtime: 76; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Andrew van den Houten, Larry Fessenden, Ashleigh Snead, Heather Buckley, Jenn Wexler; Glass Eye Pix; 2018)

“The film rocks if you can chill with it.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

First-timer Jenn Wexler directs and co-writes with Giaco Furino a silly punk rock retro-like slasher film about being lost in the woods and making a mess of it. The loopy pink-haired Chelsea (Chloe Levine) as a child (Jeté Laurence) witnessed the death of her Uncle Pete (Larry Fessenden) in a hunting accident in the woods of upstate New York. As a teen punk, falling in with the wrong crowd, Chelsea brings her obnoxious on-the-lam leather-clad friends (with anarchy signs painted on their jacket’s back), four of them, to the same cabin in the woods after her asshole boyfriend Garth (Granit Lahu) stabs a cop during a drug raid at a city club. As soon as arriving at the abandoned family cabin, Chelsea’s meatball crew calls attention to themselves by littering the woods with beer cans, playing loud music and spray painting with graffiti the trees. This gets the attention of the creepy ranger (Jeremy Holm), the same one who comforted Chelsea when her uncle was killed. This time the ranger is unhinged and goes after the punks. This is the set-up that brings on both the horror show killings and the cheesy laughs that reminds one of a 1980s-like slasher film. The loud film has nothing about it that is subtle, as the low-budget indie offers us a hardcore punk soundtrack and a neon colored screen and an aggressive in-your-face shooting style. It weighs in favoring a counterculture format and delights in the punk rockers battling with the crazed ranger over the turf. The conflicted Chelsea, caught in the middle, is trying to find the right thing to do. The fun is in watching both sides dish it out, and in its few surprises in the third act. The film rocks if you can chill with it, or else you might as well tune it out as it has no social significance and offers nothing insightful about the punk teens.

REVIEWED ON 11/26/2018 GRADE: B-     https://dennisschwartzreviews.com/