The R.I.P Man (2025) [Movie Review]

Throughout the decades, slasher film villains have had their fair share of bizarre motivations for committing violence. Silent Night, Deadly Night’s Billy Chapman, for instance, targets “naughty” people as Santa because his parents were murdered by a man in a Santa suit almost immediately after his grandfather scared the pants off of him into thinking Santa would punish him that night. Harry Warden (My Bloody Valentine) had a vendetta against Valentine’s Day celebrations because, in their rush to get to a town dance, his neglectful supervisors caused a coal mine collapse. Timmy Reston (Pieces) just wanted to finish his damned jigsaw puzzle. And in Jamie Langlands’s The R.I.P Man, Alden Pick gathers the teeth of his victims to put in his own toothless mouth in deference to an obscure medieval Italian clan of misfits. 

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To the credit of writer Rhys Thompson, the initially silly premise works well in the confines of the film’s world. The R.I.P Man plays out like a police procedural, focusing more on DCI Mullen (Matt Weyland) and DC Townsend (Langlands), the officers investigating the crimes, than it does on the victims and their friends. Doing much of the heavy lifting toward making the plot work, though, is Owen Llewelyn, who makes Alden Pick a truly memorable villain, despite being completely mute throughout.

Owen Llewelyn as Alden Pick in The R.I.P Man (2025).

Pick doesn’t even show up all that frequently, to be honest, but Llewelyn makes the most of his screen time, along with, it should be noted, makeup and costume designer Lizzy Horror. His pale complexion and shaved head, combined with the black mouthguard he wears, give Pick a very Nosferatu-like appearance, amplified by his propensity to fade in from the dark background like a vampire rising from the mist. His spike-studded military jacket, meanwhile, gives him a more imposing silhouette each time he steps into frame. Neither of those points, however, would be complete if it weren’t for the menacing looks that Llewelyn is able to endow Pick with, giving him the kind of franchise-leading staying power that Langland and Thompson no doubt want for him, given that they’ve already begun work on a sequel.

For The R.I.P Man to work as an ongoing franchise, though, the team will need to tighten up some of the shortfalls that this first installment suffers from—first and foremost, its pacing. The film is an ambitious one, with a number of interesting scenes and kills staged in very spooky settings, though a stronger focus on gore and special effects would have made them more memorable. Too frequently, however, the story comes across as serving as little more than a means to drive viewers to the next set-piece. The group of friends at the center of the murders, for instance, never quite conveys their shock or sadness at the sudden and systematic killing of each of their friends, in turn. It’s as if they always skip the first four stages of grief, moving straight to “acceptance,” regardless of the time it’s been since their deaths, as though the script is afraid of delving too deep into melodrama territory, swinging instead toward a disassociated heartlessness, particularly for a supposedly tight-knit friend group.

The sentiment extends beyond those central characters. With the exception of the police officers involved in the case, whose cold detachment from the emotional aspect of the crimes makes sense, each character they interact with seems to share a sort of resigned indifference. From Alden Pick’s adoptive father (played by James Wingate) to the discovery of his birth parents (Paul Coster and Charlotte Marshall), this emotional vacancy persists and includes the staff (Martin Portlock and Stewart James Barham) of the institute from which Pick escaped, who are all but completely unfazed by the fact that the police have taken an interest in a homicidal patient who vanished under their watch.

Despite it all, Pick’s unique character gives The R.I.P Man life that punches above its weight. While I’d love to see a stronger emotional draw tying the film’s death scenes together, and better staging of those same scenes—even if gorier effects aren’t in the cards—would go a long way to attracting audiences, The R.I.P Man has a spark that will doubtless find its audience.

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Article by Ande Thomas

Ande loves the intersection of sci-fi and horror, where our understanding of the natural world clashes with our fear of the new and unknown. He is an independent member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and a supporting member of the Horror Writers Association. He writes about monsters and foreign horror and can also be found over on Letterboxd.

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