There’s a horror sequel to “Bring it On.” Repeat: There is a horror sequel (part seven!) to “Bring it On.” The cheerleading sports teen comedy that birthed a series of cheerleading sports teen comedies actually has a sequel that is a full on horror movie. That’s kind of like a sequel to “Mission Impossible” that’s a full on slasher film or something. It’s kind of amazing. It’s too bad “Cheer or Die” just isn’t.
When Abby and her Diablos teammates are forbidden from doing any risky cheer stunts by their overly cautious school, they fear that they will be laughed out of the upcoming regional cheer competition. The squad comes up with a plan to choreograph a winning routine in secret at a nearby abandoned school. Once at the school to rehearse, one by one, the cheerleaders begin to disappear. By the time they realize they’re locked inside with a killer, it may be too late for any of them to survive.
It feels like at one point this movie was called “Cheer or Die,” so the studio just bought the script and put it under the “Bring it On” banner, as some kind of tax write off. They then took five thousand bucks, spend three of it to train the actors for cheer performances, and spent the rest on salary and location shooting. That’s about the level of budget that “Cheer or Die” feels. It has a minimal cast, it’s set in a school after hours, and utilizes about as little of cheer choreography as humanly possible, save for the prologue and epilogue of the film. Everything in the film’s budget seems to indicate the director cut a lot of corners.
This means shying away from a live audience of extras for the performances, and one scene involving our heroine running over someone in a bus that is so poorly staged it’s kind of funny. If you know anything about the “Bring it On” series it began life as a teen sports comedy, then has lived on in the Direct to DVD market for years. This turn in to horror is bizarre, and doesn’t amount to a good movie at all. “Cheer or Die” is generally a lousy and painfully boring slasher film that doesn’t aim to do much with the sub-genre. Our killer has a bow and arrow and a small knife, and offs the characters in off screen methods.
There’s not a lot of characterization or exposition save for the necessary set information dumps that we need to know. Once the big reveal occurs, it’s about as ridiculous and convoluted as you’d assume it would be. It then pretty much drags its feet to climax, leaving everything feeling so hollow and pointless. If you’re morbidly curious and are interested in just enduring a bad slasher flick, “Cheer or Die” is an unusual direction for this series and might tickle your fancy. It’s terrible, though, you’ve been warned.