I came across this one day at the video store. At the time, my husband didn’t want to rent it, but I kept my eye on it. Last night we finally saw it.

I really thought it was going to be terrible. It was clearly a Direct-To-Video production which had never seen theatrical release in the United States. And when I checked the Internet Movie Database to see whether or not it was even listed, I found a user review that went like this:

This movie helps the viewer gain a real insight into the minds of serial killers. It really does, because by the time this piece of utter garbage is over you want to do away with pretty much anybody who had anything to do with it. I mean anybody. The actors, director, writer, producer - even the best boy and key grip! They all need to be prevented from making any more movies.

Not a very promising start, I’d say.

But I sucked up my courage and stuck it in the DVD player. Turned out that it was actually a pretty decent little slice-and-dice teen slasher movie, but with a more sophisticated and clever plot. Now, admittedly, in order to appreciate it, you probably have to like teen slasher movies… and I know that a lot of you probably don’t. People who don’t have been giving this thing terrible reviews; people who do have been giving it excellent reviews. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground. You either think it’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen, or you think it’s totally brilliant.

BASIC PLOT: Ripper copycat movie, with an obvious, but fairly clever, nod to the SCREAM series (particularly SCREAM 2). Molly–the only survivor of a previous serial killer slaughter–takes a college class on the theory behind serial murder. Jack the Ripper, of course, is a primary focus of the course, especially since the professor is a well-known profiler who has written a book proving with DNA that the killer was (authentic Ripper suspect) Montague John Druitt. As the course progresses, students in the class start dying around the previous survivor, killed in ways that resemble the Ripper’s modus operandi. To complicate matters, the detective on the case is convinced that the killer they are facing is the same serial killer who nearly killed Molly five years earlier.

THE BAD:
1) After a really excellent, and intense, opening sequence, the film settles in on its first scene in a college classroom. In this scene, the behavior of the female students is way over-the-top, complete with brazen come-ons to the professor. In this scene–which introduces us to the characters–we come to believe that there is nothing resembling real people in this film. Thankfully, the rest of the film overcomes this problem. But some of the teens can still be pretty annoying.

2) The ending is mind-bending, which some people hate. (But I really love).

THE GOOD:
1) The makers of this film really did their homework on Jack the Ripper. The discussions of the case are extremely accurate. They’ve got the names of all the victims right. They have the killer’s M.O down to a tee. And they even manage to work all this Ripper stuff in to a plot that relies on the Ripper murders (and on elements of SCREAM 2), but without ever seeming too totally derivative or predictable. It’s commendably done.

2) The plot has more of the intrigue, amateur detective stuff and psychological issues involved in the giallo film, rather than just the rudimentary trappings of plot that most slasher movies possess. The film also has a lot of slasher and giallo in-jokes, which are fun for people who enjoy these sub-genres of horror. Ala nearly any Dario Argento movie, virtually the only thing we ever see of the killer is his black gloves. And, in a nod to Friday the 13th, kids are getting killed in the forest in the rain.

3) There are red herrings galore. The filmmakers establish about 5 or 6 people as potential suspects… at least in the viewers’ mind. And they play the potential suspects against each other, in typical Ripper (and yes, giallo) movie fashion.

4) The movie has a calculatedly grunge look that’s perfect for capturing the Pacific Northwest youth culture of this film. It also has terrific, adrenalin-pumping murder sequences, packed with suspense.

5) The ending is mind-bending, which some people (like me) really love.

This is actually one of the better Ripper copycat movies I’ve seen, and I think it’s actually the first Ripper-copycat sophisticated teen slasher movie that I’ve ever seen.

I rate it 7/10 (or 3.5 out of 5 stars).