Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Micransix Crappy film

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Dom Nickson Spoiler Alert!!! OK the whole movie is about the most overused concept a group of friends are looking to get away and into the woods. Here they do drugs, fornicate, and are picked off one by one by a mask wearing serial killer. Literally this movie had something going for it by having the killer be wearing a Ronald Regan mask, targeting hippies, and leaving a trail of black jelly beans for Thomas Jane to find. I must say the kills are pretty lame when it comes to creativity like for instance David Arquette himself only gets his neck broken when he deserved worse, a bare naked male hippie gets gutted upside down, and an old guy gets decapitated. Like seriously it's pretty used up. The only interesting kills I would say is the opening scene where a kid stabs his own father in the throat with a chainsaw and Paul Ruebens death where he gets chainsawed in half, vertically. This movie really doesn't have any interesting characters and the only one I was rooting for was Thomas Jane. This movie isn't really anything new when it comes to the slasher genre and if you are interested in seeing hippies getting murdered by Ronald Regan, a completely naked male hippie, or Thomas Jane seeing black jelly beans I recommend it one watch. I give it a 4 out of 10.

MBunge You might think a horror-comedy about Ronald Reagan killing hippies that ends with an environmental speech by Robert Kennedy Jr. won't be much fun. But with The Tripper, you'd be wrong.Set during President George W. Bush's first term in office, The Tripper concerns a group of faux hippies. By faux hippies, I mean they dress and act and take drugs like it was the early 1970s and not the early 21st century. The trio of young couples - Sam and Ivan (Jaime King and Lukas Haas), Joey and Linda (Jason Mewes and Marsha Thomason) and Jack and Jade (Stephen Heath and Paz de la Huerta) - have all piled into a van and are heading to a music festival in the woods. Sam hooked up with this crew after a bad drug trip, trying to get away from her possessive and violent boyfriend Jimmy (Balthazar Getty). After a run in with a fairly generic group of rednecks, Sam and company make it to the festival. But before long, people start turning up dead, pushing local cop Buzz (Thomas Jane) to try and close the festival down. The spirit of freedom and the desire to get high won't be denied, however, and the concert goes on…right up until an orgy of murder perpetrated by a crazy guy who thinks he's Ronald Reagan. The murderer also has a pig named George W. to eat the remains of his victims.When you hear the politically tinged details of the story, you might think this is a strident, overwrought piece of liberal propaganda…but you couldn't be more wrong. This is a fun little film that has no actual agenda than trying hard to entertain you. It may cast Reagan as an ax murderer but it's almost as hard on its faux hippie main characters, who, except for Sam, are all huge losers. I don't know if David Arquette thought he was making a political film, but The Tripper is as serious about politics as Groundhog Day is about meteorology.What Arquette did make is a movie that's constantly working to please you. Whether it's flashes of gore, a couple of nudists walking by, wisecracks from Thomas Jane or a concert promoter who really, really loves the F-word, there's always something coming at you. A lot of films can start out strong but hit a wall. They reach a point where the story just starts killing time until it gets to the end. That never happens with The Tripper. There's no dead spot where it runs out of plot or has the characters lapse into a stretch of pointless screaming and running. Some scenes are shot in a very pedestrian style and no one involved in this movie had any clue how to film a fight scene, but there's a lot of interesting things splashed on the screen. This movie has its own look and its own sensibility, which is fairly impressive for a novice filmmaker working in a somewhat difficult genre. Horror-comedies can go very wrong, very easily, but Arquette strikes a nice balance between humor and slaughter.He also gets some decent performances out of his cast. Thomas Jane looks like he's having a great time as the cop with a Fu Manchu mustache who has to deal with these faux hippies. Jaime King, as the only character with anything like a real backstory, manages to play a traditional horror heroine without lapsing into self-parody. Jason Mewes, however, is the standout performer of the film. Best known as Jay from Jay and Silent Bob in Kevin Smith's movies, Mewes shows off genuine charisma and screen presence. I'm not sure if he can actually, you know, act. But there are many skilled actors who would kill for Mewes' natural appeal.This is exactly the sort of movie I'm always hoping for when I grab a DVD off the shelf. It's a film not that many folks have seen or even heard of, but it's still a good piece of entertainment that you'll be glad you saw. The next time you're looking for something to watch, take a ride with The Tripper.

MisterWhiplash Some people look at Ronald Regan as a hero, an all-American cowboy made of awesome who rode in and brought our country into the "Regan-80's", and some look at him as one of the worst things that has happened to our country in the 20th century, with de-regulation and corruption and "Reganomics". David Arquette is after something a little more simple and direct in his film: what if he inspired a serial killer? And not just any serial killer, but the kind that traipse through the woods and goes after drug-addled and sex-crazed hippies in modern times? His debut feature as director, The Tripper, goes to wild and awesome lengths to explain that.The film isn't always particularly great, not in the sense that your really 'great' horror movie will go. This isn't John Carpenter's Halloween, and it doesn't pretend to be. It's a slasher of a 'HELL YEAH' order, where it's just a lot of fun seeing Arquette have fun with his cast of young people (one of those a weirdly pro-Bush fiend played by Jason Mewes) and more recognizable folks in their 30's and 40's (Thomas Jane and Paul Reubens as a sheriff and a sleazy party promoter). It's not original either in its story of an insane mental patient who escapes and dons a Ronald Regan mask to hunt after his prey, all attending a rock music festival in the woods... well, maybe the Ronald Regan part. Perhaps it's one of a handful of horror-comedies to use politics in such a grab-bag of references and quotes (one victim says, pleadingly, "But, I'm a republican!"), and sometimes just as fodder for "damn you hippies!" jokes.But there is invention and surprise in the film-making here, and even some impressive cinematography and shots out in the woods. Sometimes there's even just a weird line that is totally hilarious (when Thomas Jane as the officer is facing the audience of hippies at the concert, "Leave or you will all die!" in an official's capacity!), and when the Ronald Regan killer gets on a roll with his shtick, quoting himself like a fiend ("Good Morning, America!"), you might wonder why this concept hasn't really been done outside of Point Break. It's not too in-your-face as a satire, and Arquette doesn't mean for this to be taken too seriously- albeit some references to Bush in 2003 and 9/11 are a little blatant- but just enough as a farce of slasher movies with a gimmick. It's a self-conscious parody that works on its own as a decent horror movie, and better as a comedy, and combined it makes for a fun night of viewing.

Coventry We've seen a lot of slashers already that are intended as throwbacks/tributes to the 80's – the era when this horror sub genre was at its peak of popularity – but David Arquette takes his 80's love even a couple of steps further, as the killer in his directorial debut is obsessed with, and even wears a mask resembling the President who was in charge of the White House for the largest part of the 80's decade. "The Tripper" is a fun and imaginative piece of splatter cinema (much better than, for instance, the simultaneously released but massively over-hyped "Hatchet") that effectively blends nostalgic slasher clichés, over-the-top political satire and a whole lot of unsubtle gore effects. The action takes place in a remote and forestry region; all the lead characters are either dim-witted teenagers or mentally underdeveloped hillbillies and the maniac with the axe is a completely deranged and unstoppable killing machine! What more could you possibly expect? The film even opens with a good old-fashioned crazed 60's flashback, which immediately explains the madman's sympathies for Ronald Reagan. A young boy witnesses how hippies prevent his struggling father from reclaiming a forest whilst his severely ill mother lies dying in bed at home. Blinded by rage, the boy picks up a chainsaw and violently attacks the lead hippie. Only moments before the assault the boy was staring at Governor Reagan on TV, and his "People are more important than trees" speeches clearly made an everlasting impact! The action than jumps forward to present day and we follow a van filled with stoned teenagers as they're on their way to attend the biggest annual and hippie-themed music festival in the woods. Guess who shall be present as well and will go conservative Republican on their butts? "The Tripper" is reasonably fast-paced, light-headed and very easy to digest. Arquette clearly opted for a comical approach of the genre right from the beginning, presumably following the tradition of the "Scream"-trilogy in which he starred, but still you can't help thinking the concept of this film also had a lot of suspense-potential. The idea of an old-fashioned, conservative and Reagan obsessed killer taking on a group of stoned kids could easily have resulted in a much more grim and sadist movie, but instead the killer is simply a life-sized Reagan caricature and fires off legendary presidential one-liners like "There you go again" and anecdotes about jellybeans. There are quite a few familiar faces in the cast and they all contribute a pretty reasonable performance, particularly Thomas Jane as the small town sheriff and Balthazar Getty as the stalking ex-boyfriend of one of the partying teens. The gore is plentiful enough to satisfy the majority of the horror-loving crowd, but there's never any truly sick or revolting stuff shown on screen. "The Tripper" is not a great or even highly memorable film, but it certainly entertains while it lasts and sets positive expectations for David Arquette's further career as a director.