All Cheerleaders Die… But not fast enough!
Brooke Butler in All Cheerleaders Die
Hitting the video store shelves towards the end of July was B-horror movie director Lucky McKee’s latest screamer… But as much as you may love cheerleader movies, or slashers, or slashers with blood sucking demonic cheerleaders involved in the plot, you won’t find anything to like in this one.
All Cheerleaders Die starts off pretty slowly. College girl Mandy fills up an empty spot on the cheerleading team after an horrible accident kills off one of the top performer. With no plan, on her own, she tries to manipulate her way around until some sinister events change everything. Sounds interesting? Well… it is not at all.
An exemplary failure
Remade from 2001’s All Cheerleaders Die, directed by… the same director, McKee’s 8th film is a perfect miss on every level. If my guess is that it was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek bloody thrill ride, nothing in the film went towards that direction. “A smartly bloody horror comedy” states the cover… But to be honest, only “bloody” should or could remain there. It is not smart by any angle whatsoever, nor it is horrific. I’ve seen more poignant Scooby-Doo’s episodes. It is definitely not funny at all. If some actors’ performances are acceptable (and here I have to question myself), some music choices spot on, and some framing interesting, the script is so plain bad and devoid of any inspiration that nothing survives in the end.
As I was watching the movie, with every twist and turn the poor cheerleaders were facing, continually dragging the pleasure down a notch, just when I thought it could not be worse, it did. Add to that (willingly?) bad special effects and I got a perfect waste of my time.
What I thought was a funny, willingly dumb and enjoyable flick turned out to be a bleak attempt in the horror-comedy genre. Far from the talent McKee demonstrated in his 2006 film The Woods, this auto-remake is clearly aiming for a specific audience of teenagers who like blood, cheesy sex scenes and high school in their films.
For amateurs of the genre, I would suggest a classic like James Gunn’s Slither and Edgar Wright’s famous Shaun of the Dead.
All Cheerleaders Die is out on DVD and Blu-Ray now.
