Director: Karen Lam
Year: 2022
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: Bring It On 7
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
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.
Review:
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 real motivation as the idea is there but its execution is several lacking. It’s these factors that end up lowering this one.
Overview: **.5/5
Held up by some big factors but still fun enough when it matters, this is a decent enough genre effort that really fires when it sticks to the genre trappings but could’ve been even better had it leaned into them even further. Those who enjoy this particular type of teen-friendly genre effort or are curious about the approach used here might have the most fun here while others turned off by the negatives or aren’t fans of this style should heed caution.
This review ran as part of our 2023 Women in Horror Month celebrations. Click the banner below to check out the rest of our month-long celebrations including various reviews and interviews:
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