Review: ‘The Ranger,’ a punk bloodfest with long-toothed bite

Many pre-17th century versions of Little Red Riding Hood, whose early roots trace to the peasant class, have drastically more macabre story beats. One of which includes Little Red accidentally cannibalizing her grandmother after the foam-mouthed wolf leaves out granny’s remains on a platter. Even within such a chilling framework, often never fully realized in later retellings, it remains a brutal cautionary tale centered on one young girl’s journey through the woods and the dark malevolent forces that might simmer just below the surface.

Jenn Wexler’s feature debut titled The Ranger seems to mine similar thematic touch points, as well as nose-dive into issues of trauma and repression of such horrific memories. An allegory, much in line with Shudder’s Beast, the lean-cut, 76-minute slaughter focuses its lens on Chelsea, played by Chloë Levine (The OA, The Defenders) in a gripping, onion-layered performance, and her expedition of the past and how its outward ripples have sent her present-day plundering ever-downward. When a punk-rock show goes sideways, and the police raid the joint, an unexpectedly bloody act from her boyfriend Garth, played by Granit Lahu (The Sinner), forces Chelsea and her band of wild-haired misfits ⏤ also including Jeremy Pope, Bubba Weiler (The Mysteries of Laura, Blue Bloods) and Amanda Grace Benitez (School of Rock TV series) ⏤ to seek refuge at her abandoned and secluded family cabin nestled high in the rocky mountaintops. On the surface, it’s a campy, perhaps a bit schlocky, blood bathe, but if you sink your teeth a bit deeper, you get a glimpse into a girl’s warped, PTSD-addled mind and the ruin that led her there.

Jeremy Holm (of House of Cards and Mr. Robot fame) inhabits the role of titular character The Ranger, who’s positioned as the park’s caretaker and totalitarian force with a thirst for human flesh. In what could best be described as an unsettling performance, often feeling as though he’s taken a few pointers from R. Lee Ermey’s Sheriff Hoyt in 2003’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Holm lets his slimy taunts to hang in the air with a far more subdued inflection, which is all the more chilling in its delivery. When he sets his sights on Chelsea and her friends, you’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop and the mayhem to kick into overdrive.

Laced with a sinister cunning and dry wit, much of Holm’s character work is very much seeped in reality. “I remember when I was writing the script, I started following these park ranger blogs, and you could see some of these guys would get really upset that people were not listening to them. There was almost a resentment towards the campers sometimes,” says Wexler, whose instinctual writing allows the villain to swell into something bigger without tipping into the fantastic. Wexler, whose producer pedigree includes Darling and Psychopaths, allows the script to breathe for a better part of an hour, a creative choice that might have viewers squirming for more action. But we’re able to sit with the protagonists, seeing the internal tension boil over, before they’re lined up on the butcher’s block. It’s unmistakably a heightened reality in which the characters must sink or swim, a knife (perhaps literally) held to their throats, and while the secondary characters lack much gravitas or emotional significance, Levine carries the story squarely on her shoulders. And she absolutely soars, coloring the quiet moments with fevered vivacity before the blood-curdling climax. Even when all is revealed, you can’t do much but root for the poor, tortured soul.

The Ranger hits Shudder this Thursday (May 9).

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