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The young virginal innocents of Cherry Falls are falling victim to the knife of a mysterious killer with ties to the town's past in this ridiculously stupefying post-Scream slasher. One red herring after another, a contrived plot, and tons of improbable situations later and you'll sit there agog knowing you've seen something undeniably bad but also hilariously watchable, if only for how much nonsense posing as subversiveness is lobbed at the screen.
Perhaps that is the biggest issue with "Cherry Falls", its transparent attempt to defy the genre constraints only to fall face first into them and devolve into nothing short of a clusterfuck. Here we have our virginal final girl Jody (Brittany Murphy), daughter of the town Sheriff (a defeated looking Michael Biehn), thrown into the crosshairs of a comically overdressed killer linked to a town scandal. If you've seen it once, you've seen it a million times but maybe not quite like this. Where Scream cleverly dissected the slasher sub-genre playing with its conventions with a wink and smirk but never losing a semblance of realism or respect for the subgenre, "Cherry Falls" decides that the way to subvert something is to just pull random crap out of a hat every now or "do the opposite" and then and call it a day. To its credit, these maneuvers prove to be the only reason to watch this befuddling picture.
You will be subjected to all of the following; Teens so flagrantly old that you'll begin to appreciate previous offenders of this genre trope, red herrings so heavy handed that they become burdensome to put up with as you wait for the final reveal, dialogue so unbelievable that you'll wonder not only how anyone thought teens talked that way but that ANY human talked that way, scenes so unfathomably stupid that they incite laughter (a father telling his daughter to lose her virginity to remain safe comes to mind as does a schoolwide orgy for the same purpose), a "subversion" of the evil boyfriend trope so out of left field that it will have you in stitches, and a final reveal so camp, unearned, and shoehorned in that it is not only groan-inducing but also evokes a genuine "what the fuck" moment. Also, strap in for an ending that has to be one of the most impotent in slasher cinema.
As "Cherry Falls" slips and tumbles before you in all its clumsy swipes at turning tropes on their head, it becomes sillier and sillier. I'll admit to having a big, dopey grin on my face the whole time but it was more so one of disbelief than one of ironic glee. This is not a competent example of the genre but it's also not a good example of a film defying that structure. I'm sorry, but just doing the opposite of the expected becomes a tired joke in itself. In short, "Cherry Falls" is just a stupid movie rife with mind-mindbogglingly dumb characters that spit out annoying nonsense dialogue and do even more incredulous things. For a slasher movie to have these complaints lobbed at it is no new thing but for one trying to hard to cleverly defy tropes it's a death knell. By the end you'll wonder if this was an attempt at intentional humor that tried so hard that it just ended up being a pure camp film or the results of someone who thought they were making something legitimately good. I honestly don't know anymore.
I will say that "Cherry Falls" ends up being entertaining as a curiosity more than as a movie. You'll be relentlessly amused that anyone thought any of this crap would pass as entertainment, much less clever entertainment. It borders on satire with its relentless need to make things so absurd but it also simultaneously makes you wonder if that's intentional at all. It defies its out intentions. The movie is an implosion on celluloid.
Are there positives? Sure. You will be genuinely interested in who the killer is if only because it's so obviously not all the suggested ones (alas, the answer is so godawful you'll laugh). It's also nice to see Brittany Murphy (RIP) onscreen. She is genuinely affable and a delight and it makes you wish she'd been in more stuff (and better stuff at that). There is a legit clever moment at the end where (SPOILER) our main characters become complicit to the goings on and essentially perpetuate the very behavior that begin the whole rigmarole. (END SPOILER)
"Cherry Falls" never saw theatrical release because it kept getting an x-rating for scenes of a sexual nature. Though no intact copy of the full cut is available there does remain descriptions of what was cut out and it basically boils down to nudity and some gore. I highly doubt adding that back in to the current product would change much. The movie ended up being showed on the USA network and has since garnered a cult following. I, for one, will not be in their ranks. I give "Cherry Falls" a 3 out of 10.
