7/30/14: Support Your Local Spirit Squad

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All Cheerleaders Die, Amanda Grace Cooper, back from the dead, battle of the sexes, Brooke Butler, Caitlin Stasey, cheerleaders, Chris Petrovski, Chris Sivertson, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, Felisha Cooper, film reviews, films, football players, girls against boys, Heathers, high school, high school angst, high school cliques, horror films, horror-comedies, Jordan Wilson, Leigh Parker, Lucky McKee, magic stones, Michael Bowen, Movies, Nicholas S. Morrison, rape, Reanin Johannink, Sianoa Smit-McPhee, Sidney Allison, teenagers, The Woman, Tom Williamson, troubled teens, Warlock, Wiccan, writer-director

For a time, Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson’s All Cheerleaders Die (2013) is a rather nasty piece of work, a combination of the high school clique napalming of Heathers (1988) with the lethal gender conflicts of Donkey Punch (2008). Just as the film seems like it’s really going to dig its teeth in, however, it inexplicably becomes a mish-mash of Warlock (1989) and Dragon Ball Z, which is a much less effective, much sillier combination. As someone who was really blown away by McKee’s last film, the thoroughly uncompromising, jaw-dropping The Woman (2011), I was really hoping that his follow-up would continue the discussion on the battle of the sexes in a similar, uncompromising manner. To say that I was disappointed…well, that might just be the understatement of the year.

From the get-go, All Cheerleaders Die seems to be taking us down a fixed but certainly intriguing path: the film begins with hand-held footage of vapid head cheerleader Alexis (Felisha Cooper) performing a routine before landing on her head with a sickening crunch. Cut to the title, red letters on a black background. From here, we meet Alexis’ “friend,” Maddy (Caitlin Stasey). Maddy was the one filming the opening footage and, for all intents and purposes, seems to be the farthest thing from a stereotypical high school cheerleader: she’s droll, sarcastic, a budding journalist and quite intent on avenging Alexis’ death. To this end, Maddy tries out for (and makes) the cheerleading squad, although she rightfully hides her true intentions from her new “friends.”

Once ensconced within the spirit squad, Maddy goes about trying to detonate the popular girls from the inside-out. There’s Tracy (Brooke Butler), who’s now dating Alexis’ former boyfriend, quarterback Terry (Tom Williamson); Martha (Reanin Joannink), the team captain and Martha’s little sister, Hanna (Amanda Grace Cooper), the team’s put-upon mascot. Maddy blames each of the girls (along with their football player boyfriends) for Alexis’ death but saves the bulk of her vehemence for Tracy and Terry. By wheedling herself in close to Tracy, Maddy begins to drive a wedge between her and Terry, claiming to have evidence of Terry’s infidelity. On the periphery of this toxic little group is Maddy’s former best friend, the Gothy Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee), who also happens to be a practicing Wiccan and, apparently, was once Maddy’s girlfriend. Maddy has been dissing Leena, lately, which is all part of her plan to ingratiate herself in with the cheerleaders: this, of course, makes Leena feel like she’s been betrayed by the only person at the school who actually seems to understand her.

Things come to a head when Maddy encourages Tracy to send Terry a nasty breakup text message. When Terry shows up at that night’s cheerleader/football player kegger, the shit really hits the fan. Maddy pressures Tracy into shit-talking Terry in front of his team and you’d have to be completely dense not to see the gathering storm clouds. Indeed, after standing there, emotionless, Terry hauls off and punches Tracy square in the face, a shocking, gritty piece of violence that immediately seems to set the film on a grim track as a visceral examination of violence against women. Maddy tries to get the other football players to jump Terry (they don’t), Martha tries to call the police, only to have Terry snatch away her phone and the cheerleaders jump in their car and take off, pursued at maximum speed by the football players. As Leena watches in horror, the car containing Maddy, Tracy, Hanna and Martha plunges through a railing and straight into a pitch-black lake. Leena does what she can to save Maddy and the others but their bodies are already cold and water-logged by the time she hauls them to shore.

At this point, there were at least a handful of paths the film could have taken: it could have kept the revenge angle, with Leena taking up Maddy’s mantle; it could have had one of the girls survive, making her the avenger; there could have been a falling out among the football players, pitting the more hesitant members against gung-ho Terry and his best buddies. What the film opts to do, however, is to spin the film off into an entirely different direction: namely, All Cheerleaders Die transitions seamlessly from a gritty “battle of the sexes” into an FX-heavy supernatural thriller, sort of a cross between Warlock and Drag Me To Hell (2009). You see, Leena uses her magical powers to enchant the magic stones that she carries around: these stones than “reanimate” the dead girls, as it were, granting them with such things as super strength. The trade-off, of course, is that the cheerleaders must now feed on blood in order to sustain themselves. In other words, the cheerleaders are now zombie/vampire hybrids who are powered by magical glowing stones imbedded in their innards. Suffice to say that any sense of “grit” or “realism” just flew out the window, along with most of the savvy plays on high school cliques and popularity contests.

Instead, we end up with a film that consists of the cheerleaders playing cat-and-mouse, of sorts, with the football players. When the guys return from their little murder spree, they strut through the school like they were, literally, the cocks of the walk. Until, that is, the cheerleaders return to strut through the school. The guys know that the cheerleaders went into the lake, so suspect some sort of teenage version of Gaslight (1944): Terry, for his part, isn’t so sure and gets all the confirmation he needs when one of his guys witnesses Leena levitating her stones in the middle of class (Leena also ended up with a stone in her chest, despite not being dead, which appears to have amplified her magic powers). Every time the cheerleaders kill one of the football team, their power increases exponentially. This fact isn’t lost on Terry, who decides to turn the tables by consuming the cheerleaders’ magical stones and increasing his own powers. Soon, with the ranks on both sides decimated, it’s up to Maddy and Leena to finally put an end to Terry’s reign of terror. Will they be strong enough to stop him, however? And what other tricks might Leena have up her sleeve?

Right up to the point where the film transitioned from a tense, blackly comic drama into a full-on supernatural action film, I was largely, if not completely, on board. In many ways, All Cheerleaders Die plays like a lesser version of All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006) or a very light version of Heathers. While I didn’t love the film, I could appreciate where it was heading and looked forward to seeing if McKee was going to get as extreme as he did in The Woman. Once the magic, glowing, floating stones appeared, however, it became pretty impossible to take the film seriously. It doesn’t, of course, help that the CGI on the stones is utterly absurd and awful, reminding of nothing so much as all the damn cheesy “lightning and laser eyes” effects from crappy ’80s-’90s direct-to-video sci-fi epics.

Once the film finds its footing as a silly supernatural tale, it manages to recover a bit, based purely on its ability to grab the concept with both hands and refuse to let go. While the stones never do look any better than the similar effect in Warlock, there are a few eye-candy moments in the latter half that are well-executed (the bit where Tracy’s stone causes Ben (Nicholas S. Morrison) to bleed out in slo-mo, ala liquid droplets in zero gravity, is pretty awesome, as is the final jump-scare, which handily and honestly sets up a sequel). The biggest issue is simply that the two separate aspects don’t really cohere, making this seem like a couple different films jammed together.

In fact, in some ways, All Cheerleaders Die is a tale of several movies: a horror film, an indie superhero tale, a battle of the sexes film, a black comedy set in a high school…the unfortunate truth is that only a few of these films actually work. The horror elements are well-done, with some nicely realized gore scenes, while the “super powers” stuff is hackneyed and trite. The battle of the sexes stuff ends up being fairly negligible (again, Donkey Punch did it much better and pulled, ahem, fewer punches), while the blackly comic high school material ends up being fairly effective. Focused on any one of these angles, All Cheerleaders Die would have been a much stronger film: as it is, the movie lacks focus and coherence, issues that McKee has never had in his previous films.

I really wanted to like All Cheerleaders Die more than I did but, alas, the film was pretty much one continual disappointment. While the acting was solid, there were never any truly stand-out performances, although Stasey did admirably as the protagonist. The film looked and sounded pretty great, which made the ultra-cheesy SFX all the more laughable and obnoxious: it was almost as if the whole concept of the magic stones was added in post-production, which is just about as bad as it sounds.

I will say, however, that I appreciated how the filmmakers managed to marginalize the concept of the “male gaze”: unlike just about every other horror film involving cheerleaders in the history of horror films, the women in All Cheerleaders Die don’t spend the film in various states of undress, the camera lasciviously tracking up and down their nude bodies. In fact, there’s really only one scene that I can recall that broached this in any way and that would be the one where Tracy has just “reawakened” and proceeds to march across the street, wearing only a bra and panties, in order to find some “food.” In many ways, this is the scene that proves my rule: despite Tracy’s attire, the emphasis on the scene is squarely on her ravenous appetite, not the female form. It’s a smart bit and, unfortunately, one that I wish were repeated more often.

Ultimately, I’m probably so disappointed by All Cheerleaders Die because of my experiences with McKee’s other films: May (2002), The Woods (2006) and The Woman, along with McKee’s entry in the Master of Horror series, Sick Girl (2006), are all fascinating examinations of both feminism and male/female violence, with smart, three-dimensional characters and some astoundingly original/shocking elements. The Woman, in particular, was such a gut-punch that it easily ranks as one of the most unpleasant, yet necessary, films I’ve seen in decades. By comparison, All Cheerleaders Die is an entertaining, yet slight and disposable throwaway: by the time the climax rolls around, with Terry and the surviving women fighting like left-over Street Fighter characters, the whole thing feels like a cheap direct-to-video curiosity, rather than a film with an actual agenda.

If only the film were able to stay on the gritty road it started on: there’s definitely a really good movie buried in All Cheerleaders Die…the evidence of that film is pretty much everywhere you look. The problem, of course, ends up being that there are also at least three mediocre films trapped in there and this is, of course, at least three films too many.

5/6/14: It’s His World…We Just Live Here

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absentee father, American Beauty, Ann Magnuson, Arizona, Catcher in the Rye, Chris Klein, cinema, coming of age, depression, developmentally disabled, divorced parents, Don Cheadle, drama, drug abuse, drug dealer, dysfunctional family, fate, films, flashbacks, Holden Caulfield, independent films, indie dramas, infidelity, James Glennon, Jena Malone, Jeremy Enigk, juvenile detention facility, Kerry Washington, Kevin Spacey, Leland Fitzgerald, Lena Olin, Martin Donovan, Matthew Ryan Hoge, mentally challenged, Michael Pena, Michael Welch, Michelle Williams, Movies, murder, Nick Kokich, prison films, revenge, romance, Ryan Gosling, shattered families, Sherilyn Fenn, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Notebook, The United States of Leland, troubled teens, vengeance, voice-over narration, Wesley Jonathan, writer-director, youth in trouble

Grainy, home movie footage of a yard gives ways to a slow pan across the bright, vibrant green grass, as Ryan Gosling’s familiar, rather bored voice talks about “not being able to remember that day.” The pan continues, as deliberate as a lazy summer day, before finally ending on the obviously dead body of a young man. Gosling stands there, looking pensive for a moment, before jogging off as the Pixies’ iconic “Gigantic” bursts from the soundtrack. It’s a dynamic, effective opening and as a good a way as any to pull us into The United States of Leland (2003), a coming-of-age downer that often plays like a lesser American Beauty, despite having a few extra tricks up its sleeve.

After the opening, we get the meat of the situation: Leland Fitzgerald (Gosling) has just admitted to his mother, Marybeth (Lena Olin) that he killed Ryan Pollard (Michael Welch), the developmentally disabled brother of his girlfriend, Becky (Jena Malone). The whole thing comes as even more of a shock since Leland is so easy-going and seemed to genuinely care about Ryan. His admission is emotionless, distant and he’s locked up post-haste. While inside the juvenile detention facility, Leland meets the usual, stock “guy in prison” characters: a kindly Hispanic inmate (Michael Pena) who tries to strike up a friendship with Leland and a young, black inmate (Wesley Johnathan) who is initially hesitant of the “devil worshiper who killed the retard,” but gradually warms to him. More importantly, however, Leland meets Pearl Madison (Don Cheadle), an aspiring author who teaches classes at the facility.

Pearl sees something in Leland and convinces him to keep a journal, which the boy dubs “The United States of Leland.” Seeing the perfect subject for his long-gestating novel, Pearl tries to get to the essence of Leland, hoping to figure out what drove such a seemingly nice guy to do such a terrible thing. Meanwhile, on the outside, the dead boy’s family is falling apart: father Harry (Martin Donovan) is obsessed with the idea of killing Leland, mother Karen (Bongwater-member Ann Magnuson) has completely shut down, sisters Becky and Julie (Michelle Williams) are a wreck and Julie’s boyfriend, Allen (Chris Klein) is doing his best to hold everything together. He can’t, of course, because the situation continues to spin out of control, even as Leland seems to get some semblance of peace behind bars. As the reasons for Leland’s actions become more clear, including life-long issues with his absentee, famous writer father, Albert (Kevin Spacey), and Becky’s backsliding into heroin addiction, via her slimy ex-boyfriend, Kevin (Nick Kokich), everything seems to move along the most fatalistic path possible. When Allen decides to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to heal the wounded family, his actions bring everything to a boil, changing all of their lives, forever, in the process.

Released the year before Gosling would find super-stardom with the romantic hit The Notebook (2004), The United States of Leland is an odd role for the burgeoning superstar. While an argument can be made that many of Gosling’s performances hinge on his handsome, slightly bemused face taking stock of the situation (any situation…every situation…), it seems a rather unfair criticism to say that he spends the entire film staring off into the distance. Yet, essentially, this is what he does for the better part of the film’s almost two-hour-run-time. There’s not a whole lot of acting going on here, to be honest, more like a studied attempt to under-act whenever possible. While this affectation may have worked wonders in films like Drive (2011) and Only God Forgives (2013), where Gosling served more as an enigmatic symbol than an actual person, it only serves to strip any chance of relating to his character: in most cases, Leland seems about as alive and “with-it” as someone in a semi-catatonic state.

With Gosling effectively out of the picture, then, the “heavy emotional lifting,” as it were, needs to come from American Pie’s Klein as Allen, one of the most obvious “white knight” characters in recent memory. Allen is such a ridiculously nice guy that he never seems to do anything for self-serving reasons: coupled with his kindly demeanor, soft-spoken strength and determination, Allen is just about the nicest nice guy you’d ever meet. Yet, time after time, the movie takes care to shit on Allen from a great height, beginning with the rather callous way that his girlfriend, Julie, kicks him to the curb when things get bad and culminating with his spectacularly terrible plan to “make everything better.” The film never makes any attempt to explain away Julie’s change of heart, which is actually pretty par for the course in a film where characters seem to make arbitrary decisions that are designed to propel the narrative forward.

Pearl cheats on his girlfriend with a co-worker, seemingly for the sole reason of giving Leland some moral high-ground on him. Leland’s father, Albert, is nothing but contradictions: the character seems so mercurial that it almost feels as if Spacey is playing two separate people, super-glued together. Becky, despite being a junkie (those folks aren’t normally known for being reliable), is a complete mess: none of her actions seem to go together and her motivations range from unknown to insane. While Malone is a more than capable actress, I felt a massive disconnect with her character: she seemed so arbitrary and calculatedly cruel that she was completely unrealistic: uber-nice guy or not, I find it hard to believe that Leland would put up with too much of her shit.

The film makes a few rather sharp points about the human tendency to mess up, something which Pearl repeatedly blames on human nature. In one of the most thought-provoking lines in the film, Leland smiles and tells Pearl that he thinks it’s amusing that people always blame bad stuff on human nature but not good stuff: that’s all us. It’s a smart observation and one of the few times in the film were we seem to get a (mostly) conscious Gosling. By contrast, the film’s coda, which purports to explain Leland’s mindset, is a complete muddle. There’s an allusion made to a family that he met years before, the Calderons, and we’re made to believe that sleeping with the mother opened Leland’s eyes to the sadness of the world. While it’s an intriguing thought, it’s also an underdeveloped one, coming as it does in the final few moments of the film. It’s not a revelation, per se (hence I don’t feel the need to warn about potential spoilers), mostly because it’s difficult to see how it actually influences the course of the narrative: it’s equivalent to finding out that someone wore a blue shirt on the day they killed someone. Since the color of the shirt, specifically, doesn’t have anything to with the killing, knowing this bit of information doesn’t provide us any further insight. It’s a sort of MacGuffin, if you will, but for character development.

One of my biggest issues with the film has to do with its structure. For most of the movie, The United States of Leland utilizes almost continual flashbacks: often, it’s difficult to figure out exactly what time-frame we’re currently in, especially with some of Becky’s drug activity. This seems particularly unnecessary since the actual plot of the movie is pretty straight-forward: the flashback structure just seemed like a way to “gussy up” the proceedings, some way to make the film stand out a little more. Ultimately, the flashbacks feel as unnecessary as Gosling’s constant voice-over, which does little to add to either his own motivations or the actual story at hand. Whenever I complain about voice-overs (which I constantly do) I’m complaining about superfluous ones like this. For the most part.

Most of the cast does just fine with their roles, although Spacey’s screen-time really amounts to more of a glorified cameo than anything else, which is kind of disappointing. During those few scenes, however, Spacey is a nearly perfectly pitched alpha-male asshole, a pretentious word-cruncher who can’t stop his compulsion to correct someone’s grammar even as they’re offering him help. Cheadle is reliably solid as Pearl but I can’t help feeling that much of his actions and characterizations were just as arbitrary as those of Becky and Julie. At least Albert’s actions all fit with his obnoxious personality but Pearl was always something of an enigma.

One notable aspect of The United States of Leland would definitely be the soundtrack and score. Beginning with the Pixies song in the opening, music plays a pretty big part in the overall design of the film. This isn’t surprising when you consider that Jeremy Enigk, the frontman for ’90s-era emo-band Sunny Day Real Estate, handles the score duties here. Considering that veteran cinematographer James Glennon – whose resume includes Flight of the Navigator (1986), Citizen Ruth (1996), Election (1999) and About Schmidt (2002) – was behind the camera, The United States of Leland has a consistently good look, especially with some nicely saturated colors. While the film isn’t particularly original, it’s never a chore to watch.

Ultimately, The United States of Leland is a decent effort but one that breaks no new ground whatsoever. Despite a decent ensemble cast, there just isn’t much here to write home about. If you’ve always wondered what a less-focused, more vague take on American Beauty would feel like, The United States of Leland might just fit the bill. Otherwise, it’s a pretty basic drama about dysfunctional families, our dysfunctional society and the million little ways we find to make ourselves truly miserable.