First off, the trailer is not really a good indication of what to expect from Rippy (aka The Red), which seems to imply it is a comedy horror movie (like 2014's Zombeavers), but in fact the material is played almost entirely straight. The closest film that springs to mind is another Australian film, Razorback from 1984 in which a giant boar terrorises an Australian community. Here, it's a zombie(!) Red Kangaroo that terrorises a small Australian mining town. Razorback is the better film.

Michael Biehn is hopelessly miscast (although at least he does not attempt an Aussie accent), and his apparent overacting (particularly during the first act) suggests he thought he was making a different kind of film. The lead, Tess Haubrich, who plays the small-town cop Maddy who lives in the shadow of her father's legacy, does the best she can with what she was given.

This is clearly a low budget film, and the dodgy cgi and practical effects could definitely have used some more money thrown at it. The movie tried but failed to bite off more than it can roo.

Rippa, or The Red, could have been a great flick. There is really nice shots and lighting, good use of scenery landscape shots giving a convincing little town in the outback something of substance, but i can't say the same for the story, nor the logic of the plot.

I will probably go into some light spoilers.

The female cop who is the main character, appears to be completely incompetent, ultimately not listening to smitty, leading the deaths of two miners who were drunk fighting. She sends the men to walk in the bush by themselves home with a flashlight, in the bloody dark with each other. Did I mention they were fighting!

The actors did the best they could, but it just didn't work, it felt so amateur, even when you have a Hollywood actor involved, who had a strange accent for a bloke living out bush in outback Australia.

I'll give thumbs up to the VfX team, the gore did look good and there should have been way more involvement of that skill in the movie.

Saying that, the cgi for the roo was okay in some parts, then really poor in other scenes.

The roo is immune to bullets, but not a decorative axe, which I thought was funny. Apparently the kangaroo was a zombie, but this never got explored nor explained, and you only get that if you make it to the end of the movie where you see the dead reanimate in the morgue.

Overall, I would say it was a missed opportunity.