These days, my interest is always piqued by anything playing in SXSW’s Midnight Section. This year is no different, and this brilliant trailer for The Ranger – which played the festival on Monday – has put the film firmly on my ‘to watch’ list.
Set in a national park and taking inspiration from Public Service Announcements, the film is the feature directorial debut of genre producer Jenn Wexler (Psychopaths, Darling). “I was watching tons of ’80s PSAs. Smoky the Bear type PSAs and after-school special type stuff,” she told Heat Vision recently.
Synopsis:
When Chelsea and her friends get in trouble with the cops, they flee the city and go on the run. Fueled by a hallucinogenic drug called Echo, they hope to lay low-and get high-in an old family hideout in the woods. But Chelsea’s got reservations about going back to nature and secrets she’s not sharing with her friends. When a shot rings out, her past comes crashing back, and the punks find themselves pitted against the local authority- an unhinged park ranger with an axe to grind.
Wexler also wrote and produced The Ranger, which stars Jeremy Holm (House of Cards), Chloe Levine (The Transfiguration) and Amanda Grace Benitez (All Cheerleaders Die) alongside Granit Lahu, Jeremy Pope, and Bubba Weiler.
Words: Kevan Farrow (@KevanX)
