nicklevys Even by slasher genre standards it's still bad.Although the idea behind the movie is good by itself, I quickly realized that this film was nothing else than an excuse to put violence, teens and sex together. The over acting is the worse of it all and seems to be the doing of the director because every actor in the movie does it.There are NO scenes with a suspense build up. The end by itself is not the result of a tension build up and discoveries piling-up.If it was the work of a college student in a fiction writing course, I'd feel generous giving it a D.

tstudstrup I only wanted to watch this, because of Michael Biehn, who is one of my all time favorite actors. But even the guy from The Terminator, Aliens and Tombstone, can't save this crap.Besides from a pretty dumb plot with at twist that involves Biehns character, it has plot holes and really bad special effects, that can't be forgiven.Plothole number 1: how can the killer possibly know for sure, which of his victims are virgins? 2: The sheriff (Biehn) drives to the house, where a woman he and three other boys raped 27 years earlier, lives. How did he know where she lives? 3: Then the killer, who is not the woman they raped, but her son disguised as his mother, not only makes it back to the town, before the sheriff. But he has also had time to kill the principal at the high school, which was one of the other rapists. How is that possible? 4: Why would the son avenging the rape of his mother and himself being beaten by his mother, by killing innocent high school kids? Why didn't he just go after the rapists right away? 5: Four men raped the woman, two of them conveniently moved away. If the killer went through all of that trouble, why didn't he track down and kill the remaining two rapists? Had the movie not been a teen slasher flick but an adult thriller about the 4 rapists and the killer, this might have been a decent film.Michael Biehn is pretty much wasted here, considering how awesome he has been in other movies.As far as the bad effects go: when the killer attacks the sheriffs daughter (the late Brittany Murphy) she throws him out of a window on to a balcony. hard enough to hurl him over a fence, that magically disappears so he can fall over the edge, only to reappear in the next shot. Then he falls down on a broken fence, that is literally painted on to the film, because it wasn't there when they shot the scene. The dumb teenage kids, who were having a sex orgy in the house stares in horror. One of them has a chopped off hand on top of his head and never notices it.That pretty much sums up how bad this movie is.Don't watch this unless you're as brain dead a teen, as the kids in this movie. Then you might actually enjoy this.

Leofwine_draca CHERRY FALLS is one of the many knuckleheaded slasher films to come out in the wake of Wes Craven's SCREAM, and it's a particularly pitiful effort for the genre. All of the old, tired clichés are dragged out here and treated as if they're fresh and exciting, even if they go through the same old routines time and again. There are stalk 'n' slash sequences, scenes of the heroine fighting off a vicious attacker, and more of the brain-dead high school speak than you can shake a stick at. The one difference about this film is that the killer targets virgins rather than those who are sexually active; in films such as the Friday THE 13TH series, it's usually the lascivious ones who die first. However, this twist makes not a jot of difference to the film itself and indeed its done away with by the time the climax rolls.This film has one of those glossy looks that are manufactured to hide imperfections in the story. There is no real plot here, so to speak of, just one of those old 'past comes back to haunt' origins for the villain that used to be good in the likes of THE BURNING. The film's indebted to PSYCHO in a big way, but whereas Hitchcock's thriller was taut and superlative, this is just flat and lifeless. It feels like nothing more than a cast and crew going through the motions to pick up a pay cheque afterwards.Brittany Murphy used to be one of the most irritating actresses in Hollywood, although she seemed to have mellowed by the time I saw her in SIN CITY. I hoped her turn here would be like the one in the latter film, but no: it's like the one in DRIVE instead, all throaty vocals and high-pitched squealing. It's really bad. Other than the unremarkable teenage cast, the only familiar face is Michael Biehn playing the town sheriff. This is the kind of role that anybody could have filled and there's nothing of the humanity that Biehn brought to the likes of Reese in THE TERMINATOR and Hicks in ALIENS here. CHERRY FALLS is a film singularly devoid of motive, intent, terror and suspense; in short, it's pants.

Mr_Ectoplasma "Cherry Falls" has the residents of a small town in Virginia up in arms when a serial killer begins targeting teenage virgins. Jody (Brittany Murphy), a high school student, finds herself at the center of it all with her sheriff father (Michael Biehn) investigating the case.I recall catching "Cherry Falls" on television one summer back in the early 2000s when it showed on the USA Network. I was barely a teenager then, but the film's killer always stuck in my mind— the long, stringy black hair, adorned in the black leather attire as she chased Brittany Murphy down an empty high school hallway was an image I've continued to remember.Re-watching the film now, probably a decade later at this point, I am surprised by how much the film still holds up. The script is a clear-cut satire on the slasher genre, riffing on "Scream" but playing up the teenage sexuality angle and flipping it on its head. Where teen sexuality has always been a peripheral trope of the genre, "Cherry Falls" makes it its primary focus, subverting the "dead, oversexed teenagers" to "dead virgins." The writing here is witty and clever, and the film is macabre and unnerving while still maintaining a playful edge to it.Director Geoffrey Wright employs some flashy cinematography at times—there is a lot of flaring, jumpy hyper-edits and dramatic stylistics that show the film's age— but there is also a timeless capturing of small-town high school culture that gives the film a strong atmosphere that makes it an especially enjoyable watch. The aforementioned presentation of the film's killer still has an effectiveness to this day; it's bizarre and unusually striking, and the long black hair masking the face makes for some very creepy visuals. There are some great thrills as the film propels itself toward its climax (no pun intended) as the killer crashes the teens' mass orgy in the woods, which gives rise to some of the film's more playfully humorous tinges.The late Brittany Murphy leads the film, and is as fantastic as she always was; her character is believable as a high schooler, and the script gives her room for emotion. Jay Mohr and Michael Biehn are also great here, with minor performances from Jesse Bradford and DJ Qualls, whose careers were still in infant stages.Unfortunately, "Cherry Falls" was relegated to television and home video after rumored battles with the MPAA which left the film cut to shreds and quickly sold out for TV distribution. In some ways, the film does appear to be over-cut, but not enough to take away from its cohesion. There is an ample amount of gore in the film as well, which was surprising to see on the USA Network back in the early 2000s.Overall, "Cherry Falls" is a clever and unashamed take on genre tropes that is playful and unnerving in equal measure. It is not a film that needs to be taken seriously, and in fact, it makes sure its audience need not to. It adequately situates itself within the universe that all high school slasher films reside in and bounces off the landmarks gracefully, leaving us with a fun, creepy, and self-aware end product that is as quick-witted as it is absurd. 8/10.