Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

This is one of the worst things you can encounter on the lowest horror-shelves of your local video store; a pretentious teen-slasher! "Ripper" basically is just another routine and mediocre stalk 'n slash film, but it stupidly also pretends to be a deeply intellectual and psychological thriller investigating the sickening motives that drive serial killers. In theory this means "Ripper" is a film that constantly features college students bragging about their knowledge concerning the modus operandi and trademarks of notorious killers – Jack the Ripper in particular – but when they eventually face one themselves, they make exactly all the same mistakes victims usually make in low-brain horror films. Every member in class perfectly knows Jack the Ripper picked up prostitutes or that Ted Bundy aimed at lonely and insecure girls, yet even then they still have random sex with a total stranger at a party and continue to separate themselves from the group even though several of their friends already turned up dead. Are we really supposed to believe these characters are any smarter than the usual ones in post-Scream slashers just because they read a few books about profiling techniques? On the bright side, however, "Ripper" certainly isn't a total waste of time. The opening sequences and the finale are pleasingly exciting, there's a relatively fair amount of gore and the cast contains a handful of familiar faces, like Jürgen Prochnow ("The Keep") and Bruce Payne ("Passenger 57"). The latter stars as a prominent FBI-profiler slash university professor, teaching his class to 'expect the unexpected' when faced with an actual serial killer. They can soon enough put this theory into practice when an actual Jack the Ripper copycat shows up on campus. He/she seems to follow around the class' outsider Molly, as she already survived a similar massacre party on an island a couple of years ago. Quite annoyingly, the characters are killed off in order of likableness and beauty. The most ravishing scream-queens, Kelly Brook, Emmanuelle Vaugier and Daniella Evangelista, are the first to die whereas the insufferable ones like the class-clown and the obnoxious French import actress hang around till the very end. Much more than on the revived popularity of slashers, "Ripper" attempts to cash in on the success of Hughes' brothers "From Hell". Even part of the title is borrowed.

When I saw the title and cover I was hoping that the movie would be like "Ripper" (videogame 1996 starring Christopher Walken). It was an excellent game that combined the old legend about Jack the Ripper with cyber technology. The result a "killer" thriller. But sadly I have to report that "Ripper: Letter from Hell" is nothing like that game. It is just a slasher movie with a very pretentious story. First of all there were some good moments. But overall I missed tension. The murders seem brutal and bloody, but the violence isn't explicit. Also a big problem is that the characters are not very likable. So you won't care for them if they die. The only exciting thing is wanting to find out who the killer is. When the characters have a dialog in one scene it somehow doesn't connect with what happened before the scene. I got the feeling that scenes were missing. This should not have been a problem if the the story was straightforward and clear. This is not the case. The story is confusing as hell. (Maybe that is why we would need a letter to explain things.) And if you were hoping for a decent climax than you will be disappointed. The way it is presented leaves room open for different interpretations. Normally I would love such an ending. Here it isn't very effective. The ending doesn't clear up motive for the killings. Also the connection between Jack the ripper and the killer is not explained very well. There is very little background given on the original Jack the Ripper murders. Assuming that you are not familiar with the murders committed by Jack the Ripper you could easily put some other famous serial killer in his place. The end result would be the same. Since good old Jack still makes quite the impression today he deserves much better treatment. I could have forgiven the pretentious ending if the movie would have been entertaining and exciting but as I said earlier the movie lacked tension and is quite boring. Jurgen Prochnow and Bruce Payne should be ashamed with their performances. It clearly shows that they don't believe in this project and only are in this movie for the money. You know I get it sometimes you have no choice but to be in certain films in order to make a living. But is it that too much too ask that once you are involved you can give it a little effort.I know that like me some of you will be intrigued because of the name Ripper but believe me that nothing remotely interesting has been done with it. A giant waste of your time.

Girl-running-in-a-thunderstorm-with-killer-close-behind-girl-trips killer-gets-her kind of story. Lots of blood, no originality. One would expect more from a movie which promises serial psycho killers copying Jack the Ripper. No real motivation for the blood bath, least of all a psychological one. Except for the ending which at least creates a little bit of confusion, one could predict every scene at least 10 minutes before it unfolds. Everything in this movie has been done, redone and overdone. It's like watching Scary Movie and taking it seriously. It's been a real disappointment. Where are the calculated blood thirsty psycho killers? What happened to movies like Seven or Silence of the Lambs, with original plots and motifs? Because personally I'm tired of watching helpless blonds being butchered like cattle while instead of defending themselves they scream in agony and then always manage to trip and fall.

This film is vastly underrated. I discovered it by accident when I was browsing the new(ish) dvd releases in my local video store. And I only picked it up because I thought that it would be about Jack the Ripper. Which it wasn't. But I still thought it was good.*** WARNING *** SPOILERS ***A.J. Cook (The Virgin Suicides) is brilliant as Molly Keller. I've long thought that she was a hugely unappreciated actress. The plot of the film is basically this: Molly gets dissed by all these people when she's younger and escapes death when all these people she is hanging out with on an island are killed by a serial killer. About a year passes and she enrolls in a class that seems to focus only on serial killers. *Then* the people who she is in a study group with begin to get killed one by one and each in the style of Jack the Ripper. Turns out all the people that get killed, their initials are the same as the prostitutes that Jack killed. The ending pretty much sucked because we don't find out for sure who the killer actually is. But, and most people would agree with me on this, the soundtrack is *brilliant*.I'd probably give this film *** out of *****