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film review

Amanda Grace Cooper as Hanna Popkin, Reanin Johannink as Martha Popkin and Caitlin Stasey as Maddy Killian in the horror-comedy All Cheerleaders Die.Kyle Kaplan and Vanessa Menendez

Mixing Mean Girls and Jennifer's Body with Bring it On and The Evil Dead, All Cheerleaders Die centres on a quartet of high-school cheerleaders who, after a fatal confrontation with the football team, are transformed into flesh-eating demons looking to exact revenge.

Based off their never-released, 2001 post-film-school project, Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson's horror-comedy aims to parody a number of traditional genre tropes, with mixed success. While the kill-the-evil-male-athletes storyline successfully cheers female empowerment, scenes of the scantily clad cheerleaders wreaking havoc on the jocks make it unclear whether the film is effectively poking fun at the genre's sexualization of women, or feeding into it.

Tom Williamson's chilling performance as football captain Terry is effective, but it's Brooke Butler's transformation from detestable popular cheerleader to badass demoness that really steals the show.

With the B-movie vigour it gets from its expected use of blood, sex, humour and violence, along with a few clever twists, All Cheerleaders Die offers everything you'd expect from a horror flick with this title, but slow, bumpy pacing and underdeveloped characters make it ultimately forgettable.

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