All Cheerleaders Die

It managed to start and end well, but everything inbetween was lacking

Featuring quite possibly the most spoilerific title since Indiana Jones and the Temple Built by Hundreds of Slave Children in the Mines, All Cheerleaders Die is cross between Bring it On, Mean Girls, a NIN music video, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Sabrina, but unlike any of those, and with a lot more glowing gems and hot twenty-somethings-playing-teens making out in the woods or fuel-efficient compact cars.

You can probably figure out if you're going to like a film called All Cheerleaders Die just by the title. While it's smarter, funnier, and (once or twice) more shocking than its horror-comedy title might suggest, this is basically your standard campy horror-comedy, but with some genre subversions and a good deal of fun. Is it perfect? No. Is it great? Not really. But it's enjoyable and if it sounds like you'll like it, you probably will.

It's like The Craft but more lesbian. It's campy fun with cardboard cut characters for the most part. I wasn't a fan of how the movie progressed and ended and I think it would have worked better as a pure revenge story where the consequences of taking revenge catch up with the girls, but I am still bothered there is no part two to this.

It's like one of the Buffy episodes with lesbian-witch-Willow only with more gore and missing that Joss Whedon spark. Oh, and it's a bit like The Craft too. Having said that, it's entertaining enough, with some funny moments, plenty of gore, and undead cheerleaders of course.

They might as well put their pom-poms down because this movie is lacking spirit. Not just school spirit but just spirit in general. It does have some funny and campy scenes but for the most part this film was a dud. I thought that they muddled the supernatural parts to this a little much. Were they zombies or witches? A little bit of both maybe?...

The horror elements are decent even with the really lame poorly done CGI. The comedy elements suck and really drag the movie down. The film ends up just being about a bunch of unlikable assholes being shitty to each other.

9.2.15

The narrative seems to change course every few minutes, and the tone shifts even more rapidly. Some audiences will embrace this boisterous changeability as surprising and fun, but others will surely see it as a barrier to genuine engagement with the film. Several scenes worked well. I tend to give McKee the benefit of the doubt, but I still hope he takes on meatier projects in the near future.

Some hilarious jokes make it worth a watch, but a confused tone and the forgoing of the sinister subversion it sets for some derivative resolution muddles it all.

WTF!?

This movie is a mess, but sort of fun mess. It goes through a lot of different styles. Some wtf moments. Forgettable.

A bad Count of Monte Cristo meets bad zombie movie in a somewhat funny mash-up. It has its moments, but loses momentum towards the end. Ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Trust me,don't bother

There are a lot of good things happening here, from the spins on typical zombie tropes to the dynamic between the characters, plus the LGBTQ aspect, but a lot of it feels pretty uneven & there's definitely a bit too much going on for the story's own good. It takes a bit too long to get going, & the ultimate payoff feels rushed because of it. The script is fine for the most part, but some dialogue is noticeably terrible & a few scenes don't make a lot of sense. Not bad, but could've been more.

I've enjoyed McKee's previous works that have featured compelling female protagonists and even feminist themes, which is probably why Cheerleaders burned me so bad: It's a parade of terrible, vapid, catty teen girl caricatures and male gazey lesbian scenes. The film isn't clever enough to work as a satire even if it's trying very hard, so it merely comes across as jarringly tone-deaf at its best, downright insulting at its worst. (2/5)

Starts out as Lucky McKee doing "All The Boys Love Mandy Lane" (which would have been awesome) but sadly ends up a little too much like Lucky McKee doing "The Craft". Too much crazy wicca bullshit, which is a pity as you'd expect the director of "The Woman" to do something far more sinister with a setup like this. Sexual politics is a rich vein, and McKee has mined it much better before than he does here. But fun-ish.

Another diamond in the rough by the glibly incendiary Lucky McKee, its plot sideslips to totally unforeseen places. This time, the tone is lighter to reflect the shallow ohmigod climate of clique-y high school Americana and, within less than 90 minutes, propels from lesbian romance, to argument against gender roles, to genuine horror, to the supernatural, to satire, to teasing B flick, all kept fresh and resonant by the genuinely convincing and keen performances of its actresses.