*½/****
written and directed by Lucky McKee & Chris Sivertson
by Bill Chambers I suppose they’ve both been campy at times, but I think Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson might be too grim for something like All Cheerleaders Die (or as the closing title card ominously puts it, “All Cheerleaders Die, Part One”)–a title that at the least augurs fun schlock tinged with the alarmism of ’50s hygiene cinema. After capturing the dubious–but funny–death of the head cheerleader on tape, standoffish Maddy (Caitlin Stasey) remodels herself as a Heather and earns a spot on the squad, much to the dismay of goth outcast and secret admirer Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee, who looks exactly like brother Kodi). Maddy has a hidden agenda, though: to bring down Terry (Drake-ish Tom Williamson), the vicious, womanizing captain of the football team, from within that incestuous megaclique. When Terry runs the cheerleaders fatally off the road, Leena manages to resurrect them using Wiccan crystals, but not without transforming them into superhuman zombies with vampiric appetites and psychically linking them all like E.T. and Elliott. (Cue the gratuitous collective orgasm, an interminable gag saved by the better joke of a disabled kid fuming over the handicap washroom being used for nookie. I feel you, brother.) Eventually the rules and internal logic governing the movie’s magic become disengagingly random, and a lot of the goodwill generated by the likable cast–“the best thing about McKee is the women he surrounds himself with,” our own Bryant Frazer once wrote, and that’s as true as ever–gets washed away in a tsunami of nihilism. As is often the best advice, rent Heathers instead.
