I wanted to like All Cheerleaders Die way more than I actually did. I'm a big fan of director Lucky McKee - May is awesome in so many ways and The Woman is one of my favorites of the last few years. Even though Cheerleaders is a co-directed film (McKee and Chris Sivertson), I was pretty excited to see something new from him. His films are usually pretty upfront and deft about exploring gender/sexuality issues in really interesting ways, as well as subverting genre conventions. It seemed like the high school setting of Cheerleaders would be fertile ground for a filmmaker of his skills and style. I also knew that McKee & Sivertson were revisiting a short they made 10+ years earlier, so I assume they must have had good reason to go back to the well. Unfortunately, it just didn't do it for me. There's a pretty fine line between mocking negative genre conventions and outright embracing them - and I felt like Cheerleaders was pretty inconsistent and veered a little to closely to the latter.
Our main character is Maddy (Caitlin Stasey) - she's making a video profile of her friend Lexi (the captain of the cheer team) and catches her accidental death on camera. After seemingly not being okay with how the cheer team has handled her death, Maddy decides to join the team - the idea being that she wants revenge and will make their lives difficult by sabotaging them. It's not the easiest route to revenge, but whatever. As you would expect, the cheerleading team is firmly intertwined with the football team. Maddy buddies up with the cheer captain Tracy (Brook Butler) and puts her plan into motion by accusing Tracy's boyfriend (the captain of the football team) of cheating on her. Tracy's boyfriend is the hothead type, and during the ensuing argument he punches Tracy in the face. This begins a football player/cheerleader car chase that ends in the death of all four cheerleaders. The guys responsible take off and act like nothing happened (although a couple of them have reservations about it). Luckily, Maddy's stalkerish ex-girlfriend Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee) is close behind. Leena also happens to be big into witchcraft - she's unsure of her powers but with the help of some magic stones brings the four of them back to life! They look and act pretty much normal, but now they are super strong and have a thirst for blood... and revenge!
I guess my biggest issue with All Cheerleaders Die was the tone. To me, it seemed like a sexed up and violent teen soap opera. There are too many failed attempts at humor for much of it to be taken seriously, and most of the characters are a little too much like caricatures to even resemble actual people. I'm okay with people/characters/situations being unreal, but then the film tries to take some things seriously. The juxtaposition of "Crazy Exploitation" and "Very Serious Drama" is just disorienting and sort of makes both elements weaker.
The horror elements are okay, but the film relies too much on iffy-looking CGI. I get that you'll need to use some of it to impart witch-like powers, but it's one of those times where the effects actually distract you from the story. But unfortunately it's not a really good looking-film anyways. Some of the scenes in the high school have a very stylish music-video feel to them (I mean that as a compliment), but otherwise it just didn't look all that cinematic.
There are a lot of hormones running wild in Cheerleaders too - not that there's a lot of sex/nudity per se, but there is a lot of skimpy outfits and frank discussions - in many scenes, sex just oozes off the screen. I guess the argument could be made that these young women are embracing the power of their sexuality, but to what end? The way it's presented here makes it feel more exploitative than illuminating. I can sometimes get behind exploitation films, but the tone here just didn't work for me.
Probably the strongest thing about the movie is the acting - Caitlin Stasey is excellent as Maddy. You can easily see the conflict that's going on inside her. It's a pretty subdued but effective performance. The dramatic parts of the film don't really work, but it's not because of her. Brooke Butler was great as Tracy, taking what would probably end up as "the bitch" character in other hands and fleshing her out into someone you actually care about. The other cheerleaders/witches do a good job basically taking one note characters and giving them what humanity they can. The football players don't fare quite so well in the acting department (the stoner kids were a bit grating), but no one is distractingly bad.
I really wanted to like All Cheerleaders Die - I feel like I respect what they were going for, but the satirical parts of it just didn't land for me. And there wasn't enough else going on to make it all that enjoyable. It saddens me, but:
I would not recommend this film.
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