‘The R.I.P Man’ Sinks His Gums into the New Year

British horror is sharpening its tools for the new year as The R.I.P Man, the vicious new slasher from filmmaker Jamie Langlands, prepares to make its UK digital debut on 5 January through Reel2Reel Films. Tipped as the launchpad for a fresh genre villain, the film blends small-town paranoia with a grisly hook: a killer who removes a single tooth from each of his victims.

After picking up awards across the festival circuit and debuting to a packed house at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing earlier this autumn, Langlands’ feature-length vision of a tooth-collecting ghoul is now ready for a wider audience. Positioned as a successor to the post-millennial slasher wave, it draws on the glossy brutality and psychological twists of early-2000s horror while carving out its own mythology.

Set in a quiet English town, the film follows a close-knit group of friends who discover they’ve been marked for death by a figure known only as The R.I.P Man. His attacks send shockwaves through the community, leaving a beleaguered detective, played by Matt Weyland, scrambling to piece together a string of murders that all point back to one family’s buried secrets. The violent ritual of extracting a tooth from each victim becomes the killer’s calling card, hinting at a past shaped by trauma and a rare oral condition.

Writer Rhys Thompson has spoken previously about drawing inspiration from Anadontia, a congenital condition that prevents teeth from forming, shaping an antagonist whose physical deformity fuels his disturbing philosophy. That backstory, woven into the broader mystery, is core to the film’s ambition to introduce a villain with staying power. Langlands and Thompson have already laid the groundwork for a sequel, with the hope of building a modern British slasher franchise.

Before expanding into a feature, The R.I.P Man began as a short film starring Owen Llewelyn and August Porter, featuring special effects by Lizzy Horror and a score by Cristian Parras. The expanded version brings back key creative collaborators while adding new producers, including Paul Hughbanks, Dan Michael Jedrejczyk and John Norris Ray, with horror novelist Preston Fassel joining the team. Fassel has described the project as a deliberate nod to the slasher boom that followed the genre’s late-90s revival, framing The R.I.P Man as a continuation of that lineage rather than an attempt to mimic 1980s nostalgia.

Shot across West Sussex and anchored by its grounded sense of place, the film leans into local folklore, rural unease and a fear of unseen family histories. With a distinct villain at its centre, it positions itself as a sharp, gruesome addition to modern British horror, pushing the slasher formula into darker, more eccentric territory.

The R.I.P Man arrives on UK digital platforms on 5 January, with releases in the US set to follow later that month. Audiences are invited to “protect their molars” and prepare for the arrival of a new masked menace aiming to leave a mark of his own.

The R.I.P Man trailer