‘Off Ramp’ Is Seedy & Surreal; A Lynchian Tableau of Rural Horror
Imagine Easy Rider if Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda were die-hard fans of the Insane Clown Posse — that’s Off Ramp in a nutshell. Do I have your attention yet?
What is Off Ramp about
You really can’t talk about the movie without delving into its subject matter first. Director Nathan Tape’s movie revolves around characters whose entire worldview and personalities are anchored around an obsession with the horrorcore rap group. The same way the Grateful Dead inspired a generation of fanatical Deadheads, ICP spawned a legion of “Juggalos” — dyed in the wool Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope loyalists who practically live within a subculture of pro wrestling, Faygo soda and greasepaint makeup.
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Off Ramp digs into the tropes and cliches of ICP fandom from the very first scene of the movie, where a disembodied narrator gives viewers a quick and to the point recap of who and what a Juggalo is. From the outset, it’s a movie that’s plainly aware of the Juggalo stereotypes, but it doesn’t really seem intent on dispelling many of them. The fact that the main characters of the movie are Southern-fried, face-tattooed, drug-popping repeat offenders actually seems to embrace the oft-repeated media mythology of the ICP fan as uneducated, antisocial and potentially dangerous to society at large.
When you hear characters say lines like “you cut me, I bleed clown paint” and make 9/11 jokes while feeding their invalid grandmothers, you tend to anticipate the worst. Once I learned one of the supporting cast members was literally named “Butthole Ben,” I was tempted to nope my way out of the movie altogether.
But there’s more to this film than meets the eye
There is more to Off Ramp than there appears. What at first seems like a dimwitted stoner comedy quickly turns into a surreal, almost nightmarish dive into the darkest recesses of rural America. If you’re wondering why a website called Wicked Horror is reviewing a movie that’s essentially about a Juggalo road trip, you definitely won’t by the time the movie is over. What else would you call a film with subplots about necromantic rituals, severed fingers and feticide but a legitimate horror movie?
Off Ramp reminds me of a lot of fairly disparate films. Like Robert Minervini’s The Other Side from 2015, Tape’s film is a fairly non-judgmental glimpse into the underworld of dispossessed and marginalized peoples in Cajun country. What at first seems like a mockery of the system-involved quickly turns into an indictment of the “better half” of society — i.e., corrupt law enforcement officials who feign virtue and morality while committing crimes far more heinous than any low-level drug offender. Granted, how Off Ramp depicts that social hypocrisy is a bit clumsy, but it’s not like anyone going into a movie about ICP worshippers are expecting Herzog levels of cultural insight.
Fragments of the film also reminded me of the works of Harmony Korine — most notably, Gummo and Spring Breakers. And believe it or not, Off Ramp even calls to mind the filmography of David Lynch; imagine a version of Twin Peaks where every single character was strung out on crystal meth and you’re getting dangerously close to the overall mood and atmosphere of this movie.
A tonal shift
Off Ramp goes through a sharp tonal shift around its midway point. As soon as Ashley Smith shows up as Eden — a pixie-cut-sporting Juggalette who makes a living selling black market breast milk(!?!) to miscellaneous bodybuilders and perverts — Off Ramp becomes an entirely different movie. Imagine Harold and Kumar abruptly turning into Blue Velvet; that’s how drastically the aura of the picture changes.
Overall the ensemble cast in Off Ramp is pretty good, but I want to put the spotlight on Scott Turner Schofield’s performance as Silas. You might expect a lot of things heading into a Juggalo road trip horror comedy, but you probably don’t expect a positive, non-exploitative subplot about a trans ICP fan. The movie’s execution isn’t always successful, but you at least have to respect and admire the tactfulness employed by the filmmakers when addressing underrepresented and ostracized groups. And as it turns out, that’s not just inclusivity for inclusivity’s sake — indeed, a large portion of the ICP fan base are LGBTQI and to their credit, the group has apologized for its past use of homophobic/transphobic lyrics … something that many mainstream rockers and rappers with multi-million-dollar advertising contracts haven’t.
That ending, tho
It’s impossible to dig too deep into the ending without spoiling it, but let’s just say it’s graphic, extremely violent, phantasmagoric and — in a peculiar way — oddly uplifting, if not outright life affirming. It’s no coincidence that the movie ends with a stripped-down, acoustic version of the meme-tastic ICP song “Miracles.” A single line about magnets turned the entire Juggalo subculture into a laughing stock, but the same media stewards of good taste all but neglected the core message of the track: “take a look at this fine creation, and enjoy it better with appreciation.”
That moral pretty much undergirds the totality of Off Ramp. Even when it’s knee-deep in plot dynamics about LSD-loaded squirt guns and demonic rites and baby harvesting, it never becomes a cynical or nihilistic movie. It may not change your perspective on ICP’s music or their fan base, but it’ll at least have you empathizing with characters largely depicted as one-dimensional cretins in other forms of media.
The final verdict on Off Ramp
This may not be a great movie, per se, but it’s never boring. And unlike 90 percent of genre movies out there nowadays, it actually feels like it has an identity of its own — i.e., the vision of a single filmmaker and not the standard horror remake by committee assembly line process.
A lot of effort went into Off Ramp. It may not succeed at everything it attempts, but it deserves some credit for at least trying something different.
