CHERRY FALLS (2000) Great title! Mmmm, Brittany Murphy. Yummy. Here she is, before somebody convinced her that she'd serve herself well by lowering herself to trying to become some sort of "conventional beauty" (Jeeee-SUS did you see her on the cover of Maxim? Ugh!). Watch her like this while you can, 'cuz I don't know if or when she's gonna snap out of it. Cherry Falls opens with some of the worst seduction lines of all time, truly. Then we see that a serial killer is preying on virgins in the small town of Cherry Falls, and wants everybody to know it. The local teens react accordingly, never considering the possibility that if there are no virgins left, such a psycho might just select another kind of victim. I thought of this plot when I was thirteen! They should've called the killer The Virgin Slayer, and screenwriter Ken Selden's plagiarism from my unpublished teenaged thoughts would've been complete. At least, for once, sex does not equal death in a slasher movie...quite the opposite, really. Anyway, Murphy plays a (virgin, natch) teenager caught in the middle of all this, unsurprisingly the daughter of the town sheriff (Michael Biehn, who I haven't seen in a while) because these movies ALWAYS star the daughter of the town sheriff for some reason. At her high school, where everybody looks like they're in their mid-20's, she finds her teacher (Jay "Gee, I wonder what HE'S doing here" Mohr) more interesting than her boyfriend, though all these people look like they're about the same age. The concept behind Cherry Falls is amusing enough, but it's drained of all mirth with such clinical descriptions of the murders and mutilations. There's apparently a much more graphic (both violently and sexually) cut of the film out there, which I haven't seen, but that seems to me like it would only make this problem even worse. There are a lot of interesting, semi-explored angles in the plot, like how the parents and the media circus react to the notion of the teens holding a giant orgy, which starts out as a dance, I suppose as a bone thrown to the girls, because it's a good bet the guys wanted to get right to business. Looks pretty substandard so far as orgies go anyway, since everybody appears to be wearing their underwear. (How old do you have to be to get in? Are young children safe from this killer? Nobody wonders, but me.) The killer is seen from early on to be dressed as a women, so all of you who aren't idiots will have figured out that it's a man. Figured out who it is yet? Thought so. All sorts of other sillinesses in the plot too, like how Murphy, moments after finding out that somebody's running around killing virgins, wanders off alone into the bowels of the school, great idea. She then engages in close-quarters combat with the killer and we still somehow don't see his face because his hair is covering his face. Like Slash. This scene goes on for quite some time, and while she does ultimately see his face (even though we don't), she somehow doesn't recognize this person who should be VERY familiar to her. Heh heh heh...Slash. How does the killer know who is or isn't a virgin? Is there some sort of "virgin registry" at Cherry Falls? Man, if there was a virgin registry at my old high school, I can't imagine anybody having the guts to sign up. When the killer reveals his motives, it's with some pretty impressive overacting, ranking with so much famous "speech by the killer when his identity is revealed at the end" overacting through the ages. False scares are easily distinguishable from the real ones, and developments about the killer's motives, like the clinical detail of the killer's methods, are too unpleasant to be much fun. Interestingly (if not unexpected in the least), while there are some fat and dumpy boys at this orgy, there are no fat and dumpy girls. The ending of course sets itself up for a sequel, and there's a fairly dumb final shot which says absolutely nothing. It sounds like I really disliked this movie, but there's some stuff I really liked here. Despite the occasionally goofy things the script has her do, I loved Murphy. There is an amusingly frank discussion among the girls of the lacking sexual capabilities of teenaged boys, the more experienced girls shattering the romantic illusions of the hilariously over-optimistic virgins. Cherry Falls moves at a good clip, especially at the end, which walks a very unstable line between blackly silly and slightly uncomfortable (like when the killer shows up at the orgy), but at least it's never boring, and never being boring is a good thing, especially in such a tired genre as the teen slasher flick. I wouldn't recommend this one, but you could do a lot worse, particularly in this on-life-support corner of the genre. Hell, I'd watch just about anything with Murphy in it, though I guess I'm not so sure these days, since that Maxim cover doesn't seem to be an isolated incident. Brittany, what are you thinking? Directed by Geoffrey Wright (no relation). BACK TO THE C's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE