A Brush with Death

I have just watched this online under the title "Cheerleaders Blood" but under any name it sucks big time! Five rather dumb cheerleaders spend a weekend break at a country mansion belonging to the uncle of one of them and in the style of say Texas Chainsaw Massacre some of the local hicks aren't very friendly. The acting, script and plot are all bottom of the barrel, the only half decent performance was Max Taylor as a stuttering hick named Caleb but cruelly called The Retard by the locals. Nothing that can be considered horror happens for nearly the first hour, I can't believe that it took three people to write this drivel. Added to the sheer boredom and frustration is the fact that the sound is terrible, at times it was difficult to hear what is being said by the "actors". I have seen worse movies but trust me when I say that this movie is very, very, very poor.

Five cheerleaders drive down to one of their uncle's mansion for a mini-vacation, once there they meet Ranken the neighbor from half a mile down, he tells them of an abandoned house close by. A good portion of the movie deals with the girls lounging around the mansion's pool in bikinis (but never do any of the get even topless, that would inject something of interest into the film) with the horror/slasher element of the film relegated to late in the movie (apart from a few asides to other people that don't really go anywhere & some flashbacks) Even if I weren't jaded by atrocious low-budget slasher films, this one would've still bored me to tears. Nothing even remotely approaching competence (much less entertainment) can be found within this wast of celluloid.

My Grade: F

The case quoted one plot while the movie was well barely similar.

Case" Five cheerleaders spend the night in an abandoned farmhouse and find themselves up against a vengeful ghost.

They soon find out the spirit is from a dead boy who painted a portrait of the brother he killed forty years earlier." OK now while there are 5 girls that come off as sluts it is never really clear that they are cheerleaders. The first 2/3 of the film is spent watching them swim and party. This has an R rating but comes off like middle school porn! There is an occasional flashback of a demented older brother making the younger one kill a cat and play some awful how much do you love me game and than suggesting that the younger brother kill their father.

You do see paintings, that appear to be made with blood, of what we can only assume are other victims. BUT lets make things very clear, there is no GHOST the killing brother is alive and well killing more people and evidently has a couple of sons.

If this movie had delivered the plot the case claims it had, perhaps it would have been worth watching.

Not the worst movie I've ever seen, but pretty bad, even for an indie. The plot seems like it was written as part of a class exercise where each class member gets to write one page of a script. There are flashbacks, flash-forwards, and all sorts of discontinuities. Characters are introduced only to be dropped completely, while new and important characters are introduced at the very end of the movie.

A couple of the scenes make you wonder what the movie would have been like if it had been consistent, but these moments are fleeting.

The movie is also not helped by the poor audio. There are times when you think that one of the characters must be deaf because the POV shots show someone talking but you can't hear any dialogue.

Finally, I would have liked to have been there for the casting, as the producer apparently posted a call for interchangeable cheerleader-type girls 19 to 22 years of age, no nudity or acting ability required. Five of them are bad enough, but I'm sure there was a whole line of them at the casting office. That would have made a horror story on its own.

RELEASED IN 2007, "A Brush with Death" is a horror/slasher about five cheerleaders on retreat at a vacation home in the country of California. There's an abandoned house nearby that has an infamous history and the girls are intrigued by it. Meanwhile a couple local guys come sniffing around the girls.

There are three basic types of film: Grade A films are professionally-made theatrically released films, which includes everything from moderate-budget to blockbuster; Grade B films are low-budget movies that are either made-for-TV or direct-to-video and these include independent films or indies; Grade C movies are everything below this, which means they have micro-budgets or no-budgets and have an amateurish vibe to them; they'll often strike you as more of a student movie than a legitimate one. "A Brush with Death" (2007) is definitely a Grade C film.

Sometimes Grade B films can be Grade A at heart because of the hard work and professionalism of the filmmakers and cast, like 2010's "Monsters," which only cost around $800,000 but was so well-made that it came across as a Grade A film (which doesn't mean you'll like it, of course). I point this out because sometimes Grade C movies can theoretically be Grade B films at heart, or possibly even Grade A (albeit unlikely). "Another Kind" (2013) is a good example. It only cost $120,000, but it smacks of a modest-budget theatrical release.

I point all this out because, even though "A Brush with Death" is a Grade C film, it doesn't mean it HAS to be a stinker. With a budget of 200,000 the creators had considerably more resources than "Another Kind." So I viewed it with an open mind in the hope that it would rise beyond its limitations. Unfortunately, it didn't. I'm very merciful when it comes to acting. I don't care how no-name the cast members are, if the acting is satisfactory it'll be convincing; if not, it won't. A lot of the acting in "A Brush with Death" is just unconvincing; not all of it, but too much of it. And some of it is downright laughable. Especially when the gas station man abducts & kills a girl and takes loads of pictures of her and, later, when the five protagonists break down on a country road and the man from the gas stations stops by to offer help. These were the first bad signs and the movie never really recovers from this low-level of filmmaking.

The only reasons I'm NOT giving "A Brush with Death" an F is because there's (barely) enough filmmaking talent here that the story moderately kept my attention for the first 50 minutes or so; plus there are some quality visuals, like the haunted house at night, and a few of the actors aren't bad (like the mentally challenged guy); moreover, a few of the girls are decent: Ali Thurlow as Candice, Nikki Cordell as Hillary and Seanna McDonald as Amber. Blonde Candice is easily the most beautiful, but she's inexplicably gone by the 25-minute mark. The script was really lame in parts and it clearly needed more time to work out the kinks and flush out its potential, like George Romero did with "Night of the Living Dead" (1968). Unfortunately, it was rushed and this shows in the finished product. The flick should have never been released to video because it's that poor of a Grade C "film."

THE MOVIE RUNS 81 minutes and was shot in San Joaquin Valley, which is just east of the Bay Area in Northern California.

GRADE: D (2.5/10)