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John’s Horror Corner: All Cheerleaders Die (2013), an unexciting movie about zombie succubus cheerleaders and their magical Wicca stone-fueled, bonkers revenge story.

August 7, 2014

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MY CALL: I’d only recommend this to the most adventurous horror-goer with a good sense of humor and low expectations. There’s nothing special here and the tone erratically shifts. But there’s some bonkers humor for those who enjoy such flavor. MOVIES LIKE All Cheerleaders Die: There are far better high school horror movies. Namely Jennifer’s Body (2009), The Craft (1996) and The Faculty (1998).

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After the tragic death of the captain of the cheerleading squad, her meek outsider friend Maddy (Caitlin Stasey; Evidence, I Frankenstein)cleans up and goes undercover as an enthusiastic pom-pomer to expose these mean girls for what they really are. Early in her sting operation, during a beer bash Maddy and her close newfound cheerleader friends are wronged by the captain of the football team (resulting in their accidental death) and now she has an entirely new target.

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Here’s Maddy. She goes from this….

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…to this…

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…to THIS!

But wait, Maddy died. So how could she exact her revenge? The answer here is weird little divination stones (or Wicca witch rocks or something, not sure what to call them exactly). A full moon, a little blood and the right cast of the stones seemed to be enough to resurrect three wrongly killed cheer squad members essentially by accident. They basically turn into super strong, zombie succubi and they show up to school the next day with a killer new sexy look and an appetite that is to die for! Cliché.

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Co-writer/directors Lucky McKee (The Woods, May, The Woman) and Chris Sivertson (I Know Who Killed Me) don’t really bring us anything special this time around. Their actors are weak and inexperienced (but serviceable, I guess), the effects are mundane, none of the characters develop at all, and the story and execution is weak. Strangest and least consistent is that the tone and direction of the movie change erratically between scenes…shifting from a zombie succubus cheerleader revenge movie to a weird gemstone-eating dude versus a bunch of scared cheer zombies. That sentence probably made no sense–rest assured that neither does the movie

But there were some fun perks. After the resurrection two of the girls accidently switched bodies, there’s a randomly hilarious “cat kill”, we see a lot of girls in their undies, and some bonkers dumb-but-funny things end up happening.

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That said, I’ll only recommend this to the adventurous horror goer with a good sense of humor and low expectations.

3 Comments leave one →
  1. August 11, 2014 7:20 am

    Summed up the film perfectly, it could never decide what it wanted to be, at times it was a parody then a comedy then a dark love story, it was hard to decide how to feel in certain moments hah. Awesome review 🙂

    • johnleavengood permalink
      August 11, 2014 9:34 pm

      Thanks for the comment. And yes, this film was clearly suffering from an identity crisis. Am I funny or serious, a female empowerment story of revenge or an action-style “versus” battle between a gem-eating football player and some zombie succubi?

      Thanks also for your readership and support. Please keep commenting!

Trackbacks

  1. John’s Horror Corner INDEX: a list of all my horror reviews by movie release date | Movies, Films & Flix

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