Rating Breakdown
Story - 0.50 :: Direction - 1.00 :: Pacing - 1.00 :: Performances - 1.25 :: Entertainment - 1.25
TOTAL - 5/10
Ah, cheerleaders. The unsung warriors of high school, flipping, twirling, and dodging a body count. Bring It On: Cheer or Die had the perfect setup to be a deliriously self-aware mash-up of Scream meets Bring It On, but instead tumbles awkwardly, landing somewhere between Scary Movie's forgotten drafts and a lesser episode of Glee.
The three writers have cobbled together a plot that is both astonishingly basic and fundamentally unbelievable. A group of high-kicking teens, for reasons best left unexplored, decide to practice overnight in an abandoned school, where a masked killer lurks, waiting to cut them down one by one. What could have been a hilarious, self-aware bloodbath instead shuffles towards mediocrity.
The characters are walking, talking clichés, with psychopaths Marlowe and Makena Zimmerman chewing the scenery with reckless abandon. Their unhinged performances provide rare enjoyment, but they are shackled to a script that insists on taking itself just seriously enough to be frustrating. The so-called comedy leans heavily on the tired Camp Homosexual trope, because apparently, sassy, flamboyant side characters are still considered peak humour in some circles. Any remaining laughs come from moments so over-the-top they achieve unintentional brilliance; think Showgirls but with pom-poms and murder.
Missi Pyle, a consistently scene-stealing actress, is bafflingly underused. The film hints at a deliciously demented "Mommy's Psycho Lessons" subplot that could have elevated the material, but like a botched pyramid stunt, it collapses into nothing.
Director Karen Lam does what she can with a weak script, using shadows, long hallways, and grimy school doors to manufacture tension. There is a sense she knows what the film should be: A gory, outrageous, tongue-in-cheek ride, but she is held back by a screenplay too timid to embrace its own absurdity.
Bring It On: Cheer or Die could have been a blood-spattered cheer-fest, the kind of horror-comedy that earns cult status through sheer audacity. Instead, it feels stuck in limbo, torn between fun self-awareness and forgettable nostalgia bait. Is it entertaining? Sure, in the way that watching a train nearly derail is entertaining. Worth a watch? Perhaps, but much like a cheerleader attempting a backflip in a horror movie, it just does not stick the landing.
