Medo em Cherry Falls

This film is about a town plagued by a serial killer who kills teenage virgins.

I know it's a horror film, but I can't stop myself from being amused by the ridiculous plot that the serial killer killing virgins. How is the killer supposed to know who is a virgin and who is not? Anyway, this killing spree gives the high school student the perfect excuse to have sex with each other, which I also find darkly humorous. There is an attempt to put some emotional drama involving the main family, but it does not quite work. The film does not provide much tension or scare, but it does keep my interest because I want to know how it will end. I think "Cherry Falls" is the kind of horror film that people enjoy because it is actually more funny than scary.

Great fun both to see Brittany Murphy and to see this flick. It's like a comedy visual with a drama soundtrack. A serial slasher targets teen virgins in small town high school USA. In an attempt to thwart the killer all the kiddies have a deflowering fete which, I gotta say affords some of THE BEST stampede scenes.

This movie rocks. I loved every second of it. Very scary and funny, with some great performances and a clever script. The killer is a great addition to the scream psycho pantheon. Britany Murphy is very good in this, as is Jay More and Candy Clarke. The movie is well paced and never boring. There is gore for the hounds, sex for the horns, and some cool twists along the way. The story is much more interesting then typical slasher fare, and would have played well to a theatrical audience. They should have sent it out instead of dumping it on video.

I highly recommend this as the best in the post Scream neo slashers of the 1990's.

In the small town of Cherry Falls a masked murderer is killing off the virgins of the local high school.

The cast was decent if not quite A-list: Jay Mohr as a teacher, a post-Clueless Brittany Murphy as the female lead (and sheriff's daughter), and genre favorite Michael Biehn.

AllMovie gave it a favorable review, writing, "Of all the teen slasher flicks that premiered after the wildly successful Scream series (Urban Legend, etc.), Cherry Falls will possibly go down as one of the most creative, but sadly unseen ones in the bunch."

Although reviews were generally mixed or negative, Entertainment Weekly gave a shockingly positive one (grading the film as A-). They have labeled the picture "the wittiest, most subversive teen thriller since 'Heathers'." While I am not a fan of "Heathers", this is still high praise.

I probably would have expected more from "Romper Stomper" director Geoffrey Wright, but I guess it is a different territory. The concept was good, and they more or less succeeded in carrying a one-joke film all the way through...

At first sight, "Cherry Falls" is one of the many harmless teen slashers that came out in the late 90s and early 00s in what was called "the horror revival" started by "Scream" back in 1996. While the movie can't hide the trademarks of its generation and it is definitely not very original, it offers some new twists to traditional clichés of the genre and a higher quality than the rest of the slashers of its time. Also, it is fair to point out that the movie we know as "Cherry Falls" is not what its director, Geoffrey Wright, conceived originally. It suffered several cuts to attain an R-Rating losing most of its planned edginess.

The story is set in the small town of Cherry Falls, where suddenly, a mysterious figure begins to kill the virgins in town. Sheriff Brent Marken (Michael Biehn) is specially concerned about the case not only because he knows that his beloved daughter Jody (Brittany Murphy) is virgin, but also because the case brings back memories of a dark event in Cherry Falls past. Meanwhile, the local teenagers organize a huge party to have sex and stop being potential victims.

Written by Ken Selden, the story mixes dark comedy with the horror genre pretty much in the vein of Scream, using a clever twist to the genre cliché of the virginal survivors. The mystery of the killer's identity is very well handled and the story unfolds as Jody's investigation takes her to discover the town's past. Surprisingly, the movie never gets boring or tedious, and it serve sits purpose as a thrilling mystery/horror film.

However, the film promises too much and there is never a proper payoff. Director Wright conceived his film as a comedy/horror about sex and violence in the genre, but the severe cuts the movie received took away all the sex and violence the director intended to portray, leaving an incomplete product that is really unsatisfying. This severely hurts the film, particularly at the finale, which is sad because it is really a very well crafted set-piece of nudity and violence that is badly edited to please the prudish MPAA.

Geoffrey Wright follows a subtle style for the most part of the film, and according to the script, it was done that way because the killings were supposed to be gory. Again, with the edition of this it left the film incomplete with scenes that build up very good suspense without a payoff. The suspense is broken with badly edited cuts that lead to the belief that a lot was missing.

The main cast is very good, particularly Jay Mohr as a concerned teacher who is truly worried about his students. Brittany Murphy is very good in the lead role is quite believable as a common teen girl (something not all slashers can say). The rest of the cast do a very good job but nothing really outstanding outside the leads.

"Cherry Falls" is a sad testimony of what further edition to a completed job can do. It certainly turned a promising great movie into an slightly above average horror film. Hopefully, a Director's Cut will be available someday but by now, "Cherry Falls" remains as a movie that could had been a lot better if it had remained true to its director's vision. 6/10