Cherry Falls (2000)

Directed by Geoffrey Wright. Starring Brittany Murphy, Michael Biehn, Jay Mohr, Gabriel Mann, Candy Clark, Keram Malicki-Sanchez, Michael Weston, Joe Inscoe, Natalie Ramsey, Amanda Anka, DJ Qualls. [R]

A Virginia suburb is rocked by a mad slasher targeting virginal high-schoolers (hence the not-very-clever movie title, which “happens” to be the town name, too). It’s like if Heathers wanted to be Scream, but the writing isn’t nearly as sharp as either of those; attempts subversiveness (e.g., flipping the “promiscuity = death” cliché), but ends up landing as close to “irony” as Alanis Morrissette. Murphy’s a better “final girl”-type than these kinds of movies typically produce, but her fellow teens are inordinately uninteresting and/or stereotypical, the villain’s long-haired wig “look” is instantly forgettable, his/her descent into madness is straight out of the Norman Bates playbook, and the bread and-butter elements (suspense, scares, kills) are all feeble. Intended for a theatrical release in the States, but ended up debuting as a TV-movie on the USA Network; only a few European markets saw it distributed for presentation on the big screen.

39/100