Bring It On: Cheer or Die

It's PG-13 fluff with a horror twist. What's not to love? Cheerleaders practice at an abandoned school on Halloween night, get bloodlessly killed, and it's up to the survivors to unmask the person responsible. It's got a ton of humor, fun dialogue, cool dance/stunt work, and certainly will appeal to everyone. Plus it's 1,000% better than the last Bring It On movie! Of course it's not going to win an Oscar. Just turn your brain off and allow yourself to have fun! It's harmless silliness; all violence is bloodless and free of scares. But I had fun watching it. I loved the cast and thought they worked really hard to deliver a great movie.

I've been in a slasher movie kind of mood as of late. I watched New Year's Evil the night before last and To All a Good Night shortly before that. I decided to pay a visit to the Redbox because I noticed that two out of the three locations that my town had were removed without warning. Much to my surprise I saw that they had Cheer or Die.... because I heard that it was supposed to air on the SyFy Channel around Halloween. This movie is pretty much a bloodless affair and is so tame.... that with some tinkering.... this could've easily obtained a PG rating and premiered on Disney+. The movie contains almost a dozen death scenes.... none of which are particular memorable.... but I did find it odd that the killer brought a set of throwing knives to fling occasionally. This had the potential to be a decent time waster had they added gallons of blood and some creativity.... but this is barely a horror film as it stands.

Bring It On: Cheer or Die (aKa Bring It On 7) is a 2022 slasher comedy film directed by Karen Lam (Shevenge, Mythos, Evangeline, The Curse of Willow Song, and Chiral). It was written by Rebekah McKendry (Glorious, All the Creatures were Stirring, Psycho Granny, Elevator Game, and Separation), Alyson Fouse (Bring It On franchise, Scary Movie 2, Honey 2, and Everybody Hates Chris), and Dana Schwartz (She-Hulk). It was produced by production manager Eve Stewart (Tales from the Hood 3, The Grudge, Curse of Chucky, and Capote). It is the seventh and final installment of the Bring It On series. It was made for the SYFY channel and it made it's premiere on there during October!!!! When Abby (played by: Kerri Medders from SEAL Team, Spin, Promised Land, Jane, and Do Not Reply) and her ambitious Diablos teammates which includes Paige (played by: Marlowe Zimmerman from The Bad Seed Returns, Undertow, and The J-Team) and McKayla (played by: Tiera Skovbye from Riverdale, Ride, Once a upon a Time, and Summer of 84) are forbidden from doing any risky cheer stunts by their overly cautious principal (played by: Missi Pyle from MA, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dodgeball, Galaxy Quest, Big Fish, 50 First Dates, and Along Came Polly), they are worried that they will be a joke in the upcoming regional cheer competition. The desperate squad comes up with a plan to choreograph a winning routine in secret at an abandoned school. Once they arrive at the school to rehearse. One by one, the cheerleaders begin to disappear. When they realize that they're trapped inside with a killer, it may be too late for any of them to survive!!!! The Bring It On series was very popular years ago and they have made a decent amount of sequels so I was very curious when they originally announced that they were making a horror version of the cheerleader franchise. I guess it being a SYFY original should have been the first major red flag when it came to this production but honestly a decent amount of them are actually solid. They sometimes make a harder and more extreme cut for home video every once in awhile but unfortunately they didn't do that with Cheer or Die. I did think it was pretty cool that this horror feature was mainly handled by women so it gave it a different perspective compared to other stuff in the genre. Since it was basically made for television, it was destined to be watered down which really hurt this sequel because it's a slasher so it kinda defeats the purpose. It's a very tame slasher with only a few decent moments when it comes to violence and kills. The script was a little slow and I do appreciate character development but it messed with the flow of this one so it dragged for a little bit before anything really happens. I will say that I actually enjoyed the twist at the end but this had so much more potential to something fun and different when it came to horror. The cast that includes Alexandra Beaton (300), Sam Robert Muik (The Twilight Zone), Erika Prevost (Scream VI), Samuel Braun (DC's Legends of Tomorrow), Alec Carlos (Tales from the Hood 3), and Makena Zimmerman had a few bright spots but most of them were just there for looks and not skill at all when it came to the acting. Missi Pyle was pretty solid in her supporting role in this. I always try to find the best in things no matter what but it's really hard to justify that with Bring It On: Cheer or Die. To be real, I'll most likely never watch this one again and I wouldn't even recommend watching it at all. It's one of the worst horror films that I've seen in a long time.

I'm hoping that this is the marker that rebooting the franchise to the level of theatrical release is around the corner. Bring It On has fallen far from its initial 2000's installation but most of the sequels have had some campy aspect to offer in terms of entertainment but this, oh boy, is by far the worst sequel yet. Doing a campy horror/comedy with the concept is fairly easy but its clear that this was given the most minimal of budgets giving it just above the ranks of a film school thesis project. And where are the jokes? For this to be a comedy i did not chuckle ONCE. This is definitely not the kind of film you watch alone, this is a group venture with ample breaks and talking to break up the monotony. There are some cast members that have a chance of this being a spring board for future projects but even that might be a stretch.

Determined to improve their routine, a group of cheerleaders forced to minimize their performances decide to sneak into an abandoned school nearby to secretly improve their chances, but during their practice they realize a masked killer is stalking them one by one and have to get out alive.

This was a disappointing if still decent enough effort. One of the few positives here is the overall setup that brings the group together at the location and how the killings start. The impositions against the team that's established against them where they're held back by limitations imposed by the authority figure that has a series of rules in place to prevent glamorous activity in place and the desire to rebel against them serve this one quite well. It brings a major focus to their desire to try to win and improve their squad's skills while also bringing about a great red herring in the unreasonable principal offering up roadblocks to their quest that has the proper motivation to go through with the excursion. The other fun part here is the fun energy provided to this one once the killer arrives and the kills start happening. The pace here is highly enjoyable as the first few attacks occur within a short span of each other as the bathroom sequences and the hallway chase lead to a rather fun series of confrontations involving the masked killer appearing and taking them out one by one. That this makes the group aware of what's happening quite earlier than normal means that there's a lot to like involving the escapes of the group throughout the school and featuring enough confrontations to make the killer imposing and threatening enough that it maintains a sense of fear due to knocking off as many as they do. All told, these manage to generate some more positive points than expected. There isn't much to bring this down but does have some rather big issues. The biggest factor to be had here is the most obvious one in the toned-down nature of everything to maintain the lighter rating. The lack of any kind of controversial content here is painfully obvious while making the complete dearth of blood or gore in the kills is completely underwhelming here with the characters either turning away from the killing blow or having the camera cut away obviously. This can be rather distracting and aggravating for those looking for something brutal and hard-hitting that would've been apparent from the setup, while the other small drawback here comes from the utterly underwhelming motivation for the killer's rampage. It feels like a first-draft type of motivation that would be a place-holder for a real motivation as the idea is there but its execution is several lacking. It's these factors that end up lowering this one.

Rated PG-13: Language and Violence.