FlashCallahan After seeing his father and lumberjack foreman being hit by a protester and arrested by the police, Gus kills the protester with a chainsaw. Jump forward a few years, and we meet Samantha, after being abused by her former boyfriend, travels with her friends to the American Free Love Festival. Mayor Hal Burton and Deputy Buzz Hall try to organise the event, but a deranged psychopath wearing a mask of Ronald Reagan uses an axe to kill the stoned hippies......Fair dues to Arquette for trying to make a fresh spin on the slasher movie, but, he fails miserably from the very beginning.He succeeds in capturing the feel and essence of those really poor horror films of the early eighties that tried to rip off Friday, Halloween, and Nightmare, but those films were generally really cheap and nasty, and fell off the radar without a trace.So why bother here?Even though you have quite a prolific cast, the script and the story are just so poor, you wouldn't really care if all of the Hollywood A-Listers turning up for a massive party at the end, it wouldn't lift the nasty feeling the film gives you come the end.With a pointless cameo from Courtney Cox, The Tripper will be known as another poor vanity project from someone who is in the 'where are they now' hall of fame.Sorry David, keep praying for Scream 5

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.

idinomania OK so I've read a lot of these comments about how they think it's dumb that the characters are so revolved around they're drug use the whole movie or people just asking why that is.I have been to festivals and understand how and why the characters are acting like that. hippies go to festivals to mainly do a lot of drugs and watch amazing bands. At festivals most people talk about drugs a quite a bit of the time. They're excited and very pleased that they're going to be able to be free with they're drug use and not really worry about the law and people who define they're drug use as criminal or just wrong. So honestly that's what most of the conversation at festivals are about. I'm not saying that it's not messed up that even though they see murdered people that they're still partying. My friends and I that watched this movie together agreed that we would be trying to do something about it like Sam.I loved this movie. I thought it was hilarious and as far as behavior of the characters and the setting was pretty realistic. The blood was super super super fake, as well as all the gore. They probably should have explained things better, and had a little more sorta storyline on the killer. But overall I really enjoyed it. the whole concept was great!

John Crane What do you get when you cross Republican president Ronald Reagan, hippies, hatchets, a homicidal maniac and a whole lot of drugs? You get David Arquette's The Tripper. Basically the movie is about a group of friends, who are hippies, that travel through the northern wood of California for an all night rock n' roll concert, similar to that of Woodstock. The problem is, people start dying and turning up in pieces by the hands of a lunatic dressed up like Reagan. This movie was an equally balanced horror flick in my opinion. I enjoyed the horror/scares; I loved the outstanding lighting techniques, but I somewhat enjoyed the acting and the plot structure. In fair's game, I enjoyed this film and I did not think it was a waste of time, and it is a very good average horror movie.First off, I enjoyed the horror and the gore that is placed throughout this movie. It's easy to see that this film follows "standard serial killer guidelines," which is why it was such a good homage to slasher flicks of the 80's and 90's. in this movie "Reagan" wields a non-firearm weapon (hatchet), super human strength, brutal attacks and a scary mask, your typical Republican serial killer. We even have our anti-survival-girl (the heroine that does seem like the hero of the movie). There is a good amount of blood and gore that is NOT typical in slasher flicks, but when dealing with a hatchet it is very necessary to have that amount of blood. The killer does pop out of nowhere at the most inopportune times, which plays for an effective "jump-out scare." There is a good helping of all to familiar blood. The blood in this movie is not as clear as other movie blood, but rather thick and red-pinkish, similar to that of Tim Burton blood that we saw in films like Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd. All in all a good scare from this movie.The lighting in this movie was a marvel; in fact, it was a huge component to the films genre and its drug themed story. The lighting provided a great mind expander to enhance the already intoxicated feel this movie has. There was a beautiful circular array lighting that had a tie-dye design to it whenever somebody was in silhouette, there were fantastic straight primary colors used and the natural coloring (green plants, blue sky, fire and blood) were amplified to give the audience the blinding feel of the mind on horrible drugs. Ultimately and curiously enough, these amped colors and tie-dye designs only seemed to be present when one of the main characters took a hit. The lighting, as funny as it sounds, played a huge part in the films genre.The acting was sort of a bittersweet thing for me because by a normal eye, the acting was great but I can see that the emotion and the reactions didn't fit the characters or the situation. Jamie King, who plays the main actress, does a good performance but she tends to overreact to the most subtle things, but when the killer comes, her performance lowers. There were okay performances by Lukas Haas and Balthazar Getty. Jason Mews did not seem like the pot-smoking-foul-mouthed bad boy in this movie, I enjoyed that, he performance was good but I don't think that his character should have been so "light." And Paul Reubens, who plays Frank Baker the owner of the concert, was an obnoxious character who swore too much and seemed like a plot device to set up the ending.Overall, this movie had a great homage to slasher movies with some good scares and amazing lighting, though the acting and the plot seemed a bit unorthodox, ultimately giving this movie a good average rating. I do recommend this movie for people who enjoy a good slasher flick as well as humorous political satire. Though, I would not recommend this film to those who don't like comedy-horrors like Cabin Fever or Slither. I enjoyed it but I did not like it, basically I have a bittersweet relationship with this movie.