All Cheerleaders Die

If you’re looking for WLW movies that explore the human condition, takes a hard look at queer issues or won a lot of awards at prestigious film festivals, All Cheerleaders Die is not the movie for you. However, if you’re looking for a WLW movie that’s funny, violent and features queer teenagers with magic powers, All Cheerleaders Die might be one to check out.

The lead character in All Cheerleaders Die is Maddy. Maddy ditches her goth friend (and ex-girlfriend), Leena to become a cheerleader. Initially, this is part of Maddy’s plan to exact revenge on the cheerleaders. However, Maddy ends up developing genuine feelings for fellow cheerleader, Tracy and subsequently begins to question her plans of revenge.

However, this initial set up is mostly thrown out the window at the end of the first act. The movie that follows is a lot less revenge-y and a lot more magic-y. Maddy and three other cheerleaders antagonize the douchey football team which leads to a car chase. The subsequent wreck which kills Maddy and her teammates. But Leena doesn’t accept this and brings them all back to life using witchcraft. The side effects of such an act are not only that sisters Martha and Hannah arbitrarily switch bodies, but that the girls begin hungering for blood.

Objectively, All Cheerleaders Die an uneven movie. The acts don’t tie together very well. There’s also too many plot points and characters to fit in the movie comfortably. Additionally, the movie features a sequel-bait cliffhanger. This turned out to be too optimistic a prediction of the movie’s success as there has been no news on a sequel being produced. All Cheerleaders Die mostly feels like one extended second act of a movie; missing a satisfactorily foundational first act and ending before the third act really gets going. I would be a lot more bothered by this if it wasn’t such an entertaining second act of a movie. 

One of the main reasons I am able to look past a lot of All Cheerleaders Die’s rougher edges is that the film has such great energy. The story is engaging and every scene drives the plot forwards. There certainly aren’t a lot of boring or slow scenes in All Cheerleaders Die. Instead, almost every scene is crackling with energy and personality. And the characters that round out this story are dynamic and likeable. The five main girls work brilliantly as a group, individually and in any potential duo or trio combination. I just enjoyed spending time in this universe.

To touch on the gay stuff, All Cheerleaders Die does exceptionally well at integrating queer characters into a larger and more universal story. Maddy, Tracy and Leena are all unashamedly, unarguably, canonically queer. However, the overall horror plot line doesn’t in any way hinge on the queer identity. A lot of queer horror gets far too niche because every aspect of the film is queer. By contrast, All Cheerleaders Die brilliantly walks that line of not sidelining the identities of their queer characters while still placing them in a story that doesn’t hinge on the queer identity. This is the kind of queer film I want to see more of; one where the leads could be straight and the movie still totally work but instead, a choice was made to add some homosexuality in.

Funny, gory and delightfully homosexual, All Cheerleaders Die was an absolute joy to watch. The numerous elements of this wacky movie universe mesh surprisingly well together. It’s incredibly easy to ignore the fraying around the edges of the weird tapestry this movie wove because as a whole, it has so much energy and is just simply fun. I would watch dozens of other films like this if they existed. I desperately want a sequel to this movie but more basic than that, I desperately want more films along the same vein. Not just in terms of its effortless integration of queer characters into a larger narrative but also just in terms of the fact that All Cheerleaders Die is an absolute blast.

Overall rating: 7.7/10

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