Writers: David Lee Fein, R.L. O'Keefe
From David Fein and R.L. O'Keefe, the brilliant minds that brought us... well, nothing, comes this extraordinary tale of, you wouldn't guess it in a million years, a cheerleader camp (!) Admittedly, a story about the place where cheerleaders train for their cheerleading might've been a little boring without being spiced up with a bit of something extra, like for example a murderous maniac on a rampage, or steamy lesbian orgies, or (preferably) both. Well, orgies are unfortunately out, but a maniac is there, so there's at least one good thing about those cheerleaders - they die.
The story takes place in, brace yourselves, a cheerleader camp (!) somewhere in the woods. I have no idea what that place is supposed to be and how it works, since the sound was too bad for me to understand most of the dialogue, not that I feel a terrible loss about that. Apparently, some cheerleaders are there either to learn to cheerlead, or to have some kind of cheerleading competition, so there's an expected large collection of cheap bimbos, in addition to which we also have some equally useless male characters, like a fat prankster bastard with a camera, an inept sheriff, the lead heroine's stupid annoying horny boyfriend etc. The least bad moments in the movie were the deaths of these losers.
After the first few bodies are found, they are considered suicides, so the party doesn't stop. We wouldn't want a few minor deaths get in the way of the cheerleading, would we? This means that the characters continue to ignore the killer's presence, giving him the opportunity to increase the score (i.e. body count) without much effort, but it also means that the murders are not shown. Unfortunately, this lack of explicit violence continues deep into the film and poses a serious problem for the movie's integrity. Instead, the director chose to torture us with the lead character's nightmares, which are repetitive, boring and serve absolutely no purpose, except as a setup for the final plot twist, which is simply "meh".
The opening credits look as if freshly stolen from a John Carpenter movie, unfortunately, all similarities end there. This is not Halloween, and the lack of violence (and orgies) is not in any way compensated by tension, uneasiness or anything similar. Boredom is the dominating feeling and the movie is saved from being completely unwatchable only by the two wonderful leads, played by Betsy Russell (Saw III, IV, and so on) and Lucinda Dickey (who played one of the lead roles in Ninja III: The Domination, even though I haven't mentioned it in the review of that movie). Seeing those two beautiful ladies warmed my heart and made all the crap (which comprises pretty much everything else in the movie) almost bearable, but it's still not enough to recommend anything but avoiding this title.
After the first few bodies are found, they are considered suicides, so the party doesn't stop. We wouldn't want a few minor deaths get in the way of the cheerleading, would we? This means that the characters continue to ignore the killer's presence, giving him the opportunity to increase the score (i.e. body count) without much effort, but it also means that the murders are not shown. Unfortunately, this lack of explicit violence continues deep into the film and poses a serious problem for the movie's integrity. Instead, the director chose to torture us with the lead character's nightmares, which are repetitive, boring and serve absolutely no purpose, except as a setup for the final plot twist, which is simply "meh".
The opening credits look as if freshly stolen from a John Carpenter movie, unfortunately, all similarities end there. This is not Halloween, and the lack of violence (and orgies) is not in any way compensated by tension, uneasiness or anything similar. Boredom is the dominating feeling and the movie is saved from being completely unwatchable only by the two wonderful leads, played by Betsy Russell (Saw III, IV, and so on) and Lucinda Dickey (who played one of the lead roles in Ninja III: The Domination, even though I haven't mentioned it in the review of that movie). Seeing those two beautiful ladies warmed my heart and made all the crap (which comprises pretty much everything else in the movie) almost bearable, but it's still not enough to recommend anything but avoiding this title.
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