Jack’s Back: Revisiting the ‘Ripper’ Slasher Movies from the Early 2000s

As traditional slashers clung on for dear life in the early 1990s, police procedural films took off. Audiences still craved death and mayhem done at the hands of a mad and methodical butcher, however, they wanted it all done differently. Fast forward to the beginning of the next decade, and one film combined both formats: 2001’s Ripper. This British-Canadian co-production, one subtitled Letter From Hell in some markets, plucked traits from both the slasher and the crime thriller. Yet rather than putting some beat cops or detectives on the case, the story pits forensics students against a killer. And not just any killer either — as the title of this film indicates, the culprit has modeled his or herself after one of history’s most notorious serial killers.

Ripper was not the first slasher from John Eyres; the British director helmed the obscure Goodnight, God Bless (a.k.a. Lucifer) back in the ‘80s. This second stab at the subgenre is considered the better of Eyres’ two efforts, although Ripper is not without its issues. For starters, the internal confusion over its own genre is reflected in the film itself. The director and writers insisted this was more of a thriller and not horror, whereas lead actor A. J. Cook was fully aware of what she had sought out and signed up for. “I think every actor wants to do at least one horror movie in their career,” the actor said back then. And upon watching the ample stalk-and-kill scenes of Ripper, the denials are as silly as they are mistaken. It is clear that this was indeed a slasher, but in all fairness, it was not quite like its contemporaries.

Like 1998’s Urban Legend, Ripper has a collegiate setting. Yet before matriculating, the story’s main character, Molly (Cook), endured a rite of passage for many other Final Girls; she watched her friends be killed, one by one. Five years later, Molly and other aspiring sleuths get to know the unorthodox stylings of Marshall Kane (