Image Entertainment
High school was hard for all of us, no matter who we were when we were seventeen. It’s just a fact. Whether we ran with the jocks, loitered in the parking lot with the stoners, were stuck studying in the library with the other nerds or spent all our time talking trash backstage with the theatre kids, everyone had something going on that was eating them up inside. It’s just a good thing that we didn’t have something eating our outsides, too.
The premise of writer-directors Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson’s All Cheerleaders Die is simple in that slasher, hot girls getting sucked to the dark side and covered in blood kind of horror movie. But rather than running in fear from whatever deranged killer is on their path, these chicks are the source of this high school problem.
The titular cheerleaders’ troubles begin when a mysterious outsider proves her worth and finally makes it onto the squad. After a particuarly great rager full of teenagers played by people who look 25, the girls get into a catastrophic car crash that leaves four of the group’s most powerful and popular dead.
Luckily, it appears that the goth-y cheerleader (there’s always one) is actually a witch who can resurrect the teenagers using a teensy tiny bit of black magic. Check out the trailer below:
Of course, any good horror movie can tell you that when you bring something back from the dead, they’re just never quite the same again. Pet Sematary proved that spectacularly by burying a cat, then tossing in a toddler for good measure. But when it’s four cheerleaders who were, quite frankly, not the sweetest roses in the garden to begin with, the evil is amplified tenfold. That’s why when they begin having a taste for human flesh and a lust for blood, it’s not so peculiar as their apparent need to always feed while wearing the skimpiest lingerie possible. Is there something about becoming undead that makes you feel overheated all the time?
But the trailer’s snarkiness and the glossiness of their murderous rampages is reminiscent of Jennifer’s Body, the Diablo Cody-penned girl murder horror starring Megan Fox as the prettiest, meanest, most popular chick also possessed by a demon. Jennifer would lure boys with the premise of a great makeout sesh, then feed upon them and drain their blood for sustenance. Much like the cheerleaders and their insatiable need to feed, she would show up at school the next day looking positively glowing and perfect, replenished by the fallen boys of the high school.
And like Jennifer, these girls seem to be taking their new lives in stride – a little killing isn’t that much to process when you’re looking beautiful the next day; that one girl is far more concerned about making it to PE on time.
Girl, running laps can wait – you’ve got a demon to take care of first.
All Cheerleaders Die will cartwheel into theaters on May 8th.
