"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Cherry Falls

big spoiler in this old review

Well there might be some individuals out there wondering, wouldn’t it be cool if you took a director like the dude who did Romper Stomper, and had him do a slasher movie. Well those individuals it turns out are wrong. Sorry boys.

Cherry Falls is the story of a killer in a small town who kills only virgins. In a small town called Cherry Falls.

You know what I mean? Virgins. In Cherry Falls.

Cherry FallsI’ll let that one sink in. Anyway this one is a bit different from the current crop of teen slasher type pictures. It is made by australians, for one. The tone is a little darker and less jokey. Most of the actors look like they are really high school aged instead of in their mid to late twenties. And instead of not killing virgins, the killer kills ONLY virgins. So of course the gimmick is that the kids decide to have a big orgy so they can all a) not get killed b) get laid.

Unfortunately not much of interest is made of this premise. And it’s not THAT different from your urban legend the final cut or your scream 3 or your I know what they did for the summer, etc. Just like those pictures it is all leading up to some stupid surprise ending where it turns out one of the characters you thought you could trust is actually the killer. what I’m getting at is that Jay Mohr is not just a teacher, he is also a guy who dresses up as his mom to kill virgins.

There aren’t any real knock you in the balls scares or chases or gorey type material. Even the sexuality of the picture is very unthreatening. This is the only orgy I’ve ever seen where everybody stays in their underwear.

I will say two things for this picture. First of all, I liked the young gal Britney Murphy who starred in it. She has the old non traditional type of beauty. She seems a little crazy, she makes her boyfriend bite her toes, etc. I like that in a young gal.

Number two, there is one scene where the killer shows up at the orgy, and all the kids run away scared, and so many of them are piling down the stairs that they get stuck.

If there was even one other thing in the movie as great as that, I would have no choice but to recommend this picture. but no dice folks. Sorry. I know you never heard of it, well don’t hear of it. not worth it friends. they don’t send ’em straight to video for nothing it turns out.

thanks

This entry was posted on Friday, October 20th, 2000 at 4:51 am and is filed under Horror, Mystery, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

4 Responses to “Cherry Falls”

  1. believe it or not, I actually saw this on TV once

    I too found it weird that at an orgy, everyone was in their underwear and not one single person was naked, huh?

    and I too laughed at when they all fell off the stairs (in their underwear no less)

  2. I just saw this one and kinda liked it, despite just ranting on how awful Scream 4 was and how the slasher/whodunit genre is beyond tired and needs to be put to rest. Btw Vern – might want to put a SPOILER ALERT in that review! Jeez Louise!

    Anyways, I was sorta charmed how PG-13 and bloodless the whole movie is, until the last few minutes or so when there’s suddenly a ton of gore scenes. I didn’t mind the red herrings this time or the convoluted plot (yet ANOTHER slasher movie where the central mystery turns out to be the sins of the parents come back to haunt the children, etc…) – I think the brisk pace and extremely short runtime help that. Plus the performances by Murphy and especially Biehn are fantastic. And *SPOILER* – I’m a sucker for the fact that Murphy learns a special self-defense move earlier on and then uses it to defeat the villain at the end, like a martial arts movie or something.

  3. Rehydrated Dehydrated Pirate Paul

    April 29th, 2012 at 5:58 pm

    As a self-confessed slasher-movie fanatic (not sure what that says about me, but whatever) this ticked all the right boxes for me. Yeah, it was kinda dumb, and the mystery was no mystery at all… but you gotta give it to Jay Mohr, he absolutely rules this film. Seriously, I kinda liked “Scream 4” despite its many problems, but if any of the main characters had had a tenth as much personality as Mohr showed in this film then it would’ve been a helluva lot better.

    What I really liked about it, though, was although it clearly was playing for laughs (and the orgy-invasion at the end was, no joke, one of the most awesome things I have ever seen on film, underwear and all) the killer’s plot was utterly believable. I mean, you have to be REALLY fucked-up to attempt a massacre that is pretty routinely used in slasher movies of this type, and “Cherry Falls” is the only film I’ve seen like this that even comes close to justifying the killer’s insanity in a way that makes any kind of sense. This kid has had to be pretty screwed up from a very young age to even attempt what he’s attempting; and while it’s pretty obvious who it is, I like how little bits of the killer’s “psyche” are laid out, bit by bit, throughout the film. Especially the “origin” bit with the combined baby / torture apparatus. Very creepy.

    Other things I liked… the humour in this film is pitch-black and very different to the self-aware humour of certain other series (“Scream” or “Urban Legend”). In this one the characters demonstrate total ignorance of horror movie tropes, even when it’s clear to the audience what’s happening (“I tell you, you’re about the only person I trust right now… do you want any help with that trunk?” “Why sure, I just need to get it down into my basement.”) which has a charm all of its own.

    Also this wasn’t straight-to-video. Saw it at the cinema when it first came out.

    And please don’t reveal the killer in the review without some kind of spoiler warning. Even when the killer’s as predictable as this. Hell, I didn’t guess the alien queen from “The Faculty”, occasionally an easy one gets by me, but I still like the chance to try and work ’em out.

  4. I think this movie is much better known in the UK; it was given a mildly successfully, wide-ish release in cinemas here, which always helps a movie clear the DVD and TV hurdles later on. I saw it when I was 17ish and enjoyed it, but to be honest I enjoyed pretty much any shit that had a mildly clever twist to it back then. Not that I don’t still, sometimes.

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