The Tripper (2006)

directed by David Arquette
USA
96 minutes
3 stars out of 5
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"That's Reagan's skeleton, marching our way/Sentimental violence/Leading his zombies in the fog eternally..."

-from "Reagan's Skeleton", Yeasayer

I'm surprised that a Ronald Reagan-themed slasher directed by David Arquette of "Scream" fame is not more popular, even in cult circles. In my opinion it's far from what I would call "bad"... corny, yes, but not terrible. I appreciate the concept a great deal: instead of being inspired by those who are universally reviled, like serial killers or people he saw in gory movies, the villain in The Tripper is inspired by an American president. Despite being primarily a comedic film, the role of the United States government in doing evil is something that's excluded from the pool of things to joke about here, which I was thankful for. 

The presence of the serial killer in disguise as Reagan actually comes from a little ways out of left field, because there's a moment or two when you're lead to believe the culprit is somebody other than who it really was- and then when the moment comes in where you finally do see him, there's a sense of revulsion and a strong uncanny valley effect created by that disturbingly realistic, yet severely off mask the killer wears. 

I felt like this movie sometimes couldn't figure out what direction to take in terms of seriousness versus non-seriousness, because there's moments where the acting is as serious as acting would be in any other movie with less Reagan in it, but... Paz de la Huerta is there. I guess it comes down to the wide variation in how seriously the actors seemed to take their individual roles. Some of them phone it in, some do deliberate scenery-chewing, and some of them just seem to treat it like any other gig.

For the most part I thought this had good things to say about US imperialism and whatnot, but there were a couple places where I was disappointed that it couldn't have been better. For a movie that should have been aware of injustices it doesn't even stop for a moment before blatantly making the only black person in the group of main characters also the first of that group to die. And there are also some weird vague anti-Semitic stereotypes that are probably present in an overwhelming amount of other media as well, but this doesn't make it okay for them to be there in the first place.