Macabre…ish Horror Review: All Cheerleaders Die
All Cheerleaders Die, 2013/ 1 hr 30 min.
During practice, Alexa (Felisha Cooper) lands a trick in full scorpion and dies.
Two days before their senior year, the cheerleading squad is having tryouts to replace her despite tough composition, Maddy (Caitlyn Stasey) gets the spot.
But one thing, Maddy hates them all, especially the football players and plans to ruin their last year of high school. She completely changes her look and personality in her pursuit of revenge.
Her friend, Leena (Sianoa Smit-McFee), is worried. She even has a cat, who Leena claims, has gotten sick since she was named Madeline, after her. Maddy ends the friendship then and there, on her way to a team party. She immediately starts driving a wedge between friends and couples and hooks up with Tracy (Brooke Butler). And they are being watched by Terry (Tom Williamson), Tracy’s ex boyfriend.
Later, Leena does a reading in a cemetery and there’s a warning. Bad things are going to happen to people she knows and be careful what she asks for. Then the stones start glowing and Leena, upset, grabs them and runs off.
A party gets out of control when Terry, punches Tracy out. It devolves into chaos ending with cheerleaders driving off the road after being chased and landing in the lake. They are left to die by the football players, Leena pulls them out of the wreckage but it’s too late. In despair, she throws her stones and casts a spell. She wishes them all back to life. The stones now glowing, imbued with magic, imbed themselves inside of the teens’ wounds.
The next morning everything seems fine until of the girls launches a cat across the room. And they notice they are all injured. Plus two of them, sisters Martha (Reanin Johannink) and Hannah (Amanda Grace Cooper) have swapped bodies and food makes them sick but human blood doesn’t. They also seem to be connected now too, sharing the same feelings and biological functions, at the same time. No matter who is actually performing the function.
They make it to school though, to the surprise of the boys that saw them go into the water. And they are causing all kinds of chaos by feeding at school and having sex. The student body is taking some casualties. And Terry is lurking, trying to figure out what is going on and how.
And when he finds he does something abhorrent for power. But Terry doesn’t really know what he’s doing or the consequences and he clearly doesn’t care. Plus he’s a predator and Maddy is one of his victims, he and his violent attack of her is what fueled her hatred of the team. Now he is collecting the stones that are keeping the cheerleaders alive and becoming more depraved as he does.
This horror film was directed by Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson and it was quite a rollercoaster. It has the feel of a teen comedy horror that’s probably going to pretty tame but then we find out we’re dealing with at least one extremely violent predatory teenager.
The deaths start off not very graphic and accidentally but then ramp up to extremely violent deaths. The way the undead teens feed was a nice surprise and in fact there are a few interesting choices in this movie. I was worried we’d hit a wall with the glowing stones but that turned out not to be.
The CG ranges from unfortunate to good. The physical effects are good. This is also gory, bloody and violent. But it builds up to it. I didn’t expect it to get nearly as gory or violent as it became and the end is open for a stellar beginning to a sequel. This movie crosses everything that sucks about being a teen with tragedy, magic and revenge and mixed it all the possibilities of horror. I was floored enough at the end to watch it again.
TW: Rape, Relationship violence