Cannibalistic Gender Dynamics: All Cheerleaders Die

Here comes the trigger warning, kids. *Both today’s column and this film contain rape.

Cheerleading is one of the most demanding and deadly sports in the world. Unless, that is, your newest teammate’s ex-girlfriend is a crystal-wielding super-witch capable of bringing your squad back from the dead with the tiny catch that you’ve gotta feed several times a day on the blood of your unsuspecting neighbors, classmates… Whoever. Lucky McKee’s camp-horror crossover All Cheerleaders Die encompasses everything I love about a good old fashioned, no holds barred, balls to the walls gorefest. Think Jennifer’s Body. Think Bring It On. Think gay(er) reverse Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The second iteration of the film (McKee and fellow filmmaker Chris Sivertson originally completed a low budget production of the same name immediately after college) is a bright and shiny marriage of teen comedy and teen horror that successfully subverts both genres in a way that most teenagers probably wouldn’t actually get. No offense, teenagers. I have a college degree. Suck it! It’s also completely fucking bonkers and comes in just under the wire of being too convoluted to be worth it. McKee, though an alt horror darling for cult classic May (2002), demonstrates a blindness for when “enough” becomes “too much.” That being said, what should essentially be stupid over the top throwaway is actually, as most cheerleaders you knew in high school, smarter than you’d think.

The movie’s gorgeous-but-brooding-and-so-over-high-school protagonist is Maddy (Caitlin Stasey), a brunette-ponytail-rocking, glasses-wearing, AV-club-participating, honest-to-goddess lesbian who is making a video project over the trials and tribulations of the American cheerleader. Apparently tempting the fates a bit too hard, cheer captain Alexis endures a horrific and grisly death on-camera when her teammates fail to catch her on the dismount of a stunt. (Current cheerleader body count: 1/all.) We flash forward to the beginning of the next school year. Despite last year’s tragedy, life moves on. We join Maddy vlogging about her dastardly plans to join the squad and self-makeover, but we know not why (this is dumb, by the way, never record anything as self-incriminating as a confession that you’re going to backstab everyone, end of rant). Fellow cheerleader Tracy is now dating Alexis’s former beau Terry, despite Alexis’s accident having only been, y’know, a quarter of a year ago.

Alright, kids, it’s about to get spoilery AF, as the kids say, so now’s your last chance to bail if you plan on watching it. And let me tell you, if you’re a “so bad it’s good” kind of movie person, you should plan on watching it. Did you like Detention? Go watch this movie.

I mentioned previously that the plot is convoluted, so here’s a Reader’s Digest rundown: Maddy tells Tracy Terry cheated on her over the summer (lie), starts hooking up with Tracy on the not-so-down low, a football player vs. cheerleader war begins, escalates, ends in the football players running all the cheerleaders off the road to a watery grave. (DEEP BREATH) Maddy’s kind of crazed, kind of stalkery, but it turns out mega-powerful witch ex-girlfriend Leena drags them back to shore just in time to imbue them with magic stones that bring them back to life, except, oops, now they’re bloodthirsty fiends who murder the neighbor the next morning. I forgot the two sisters switch bodies and it is SO confusing, and you know what, if you really want to know what happens then maybe just add it to your Netflix cue. (Current cheerleader body count: …negative 3?)

I always love it when movies look like they’re going to be super exploitative but then rip the rug out from under you by saying something profound. I also love when women get to be terrifying nightmare hellbeasts that are also hot. It turns the tables on the male gaze and gives a big “fuck you” to anyone who dares believe they’re in control of a woman sexually or otherwise. It is hands-down my favorite solution to the whore/Madonna complex. If women are sexually modest, they’re shamed as prudes. If they’re overtly sexual, they are sluts both deserving of abuse and unworthy of love. It’s the same reason I love depictions of mermaids as beautiful demon sirens luring sailors to their demise. If beauty is made into terror, the beauty is taken from the eye of the beholder. The power is returned to the beheld. The film also lures its audience with the promise of a bit of sexy girl-on-girl, and then follows up by never exotifying Maddy’s lesbian relationships with either Leena or Tracy. Additionally, Maddy is never bullied or shamed for her orientation, no one overreacts when she and Tracy start hooking up (Terry being the sort of understandable exception), and throughout the course of the film it is made clear that Maddy has been a social outcast previously by her own choice alone. Maddy’s relationship with Leena (though far from healthy… homegirl could do with a little less “watching you from the cliff above the party even though you said we were over”) is never tokenized or mocked.

Anyone familiar with this column is also aware of my ambivalence toward the rape and revenge genre. By the time the film finally revealed what was at the heart of Maddy’s commitment to destroying Terry’s life, I had already steeled my stomach for what I knew was coming, but hoped was not: after Alexis’s death, Maddy visited Terry, who proceeded to… you guessed it, do the unthinkable. I am not saying this is an invalid reason to seek retaliation. I am saying the constant depiction of sexual assault as a woman’s only motivation for retaliation over the course of so many stories and so many years is not beneficial to the gender as a whole, nor is it original or creative. Men get to have dozens of motivators, tragedies, raison d’êtres, and women seem always to get left with rape, as though we experience no other life-changing events.

This film may be flawed, but it is also extremely fun. Despite a messy plot line and some confusing mythos re: magic crystals, it is still a good time with some very interesting things to say about relationships, gender dynamics, and semi-faulty ancient resurrection spells.