The Firelight Shocks DVD Review Section

Cherry Falls Distributor: Entertainment in Video Region: 2 Ratio: 1.85.1 (Enhanced for widescreen televisions) Sound: Stereo

Don’t you just love postmodern slasher flicks? No? Well I do – in fact, face it folks, Scream was better filmed, directed, acted and scripted than any slasher film since (and, Halloween excepted, before) A Nightmare on Elm Street. The films that have followed Scream, allowing a new generation to re-live the guilty pleasures which we all had during the eighties with suck flicks as The Burning and Motel Hell, have certainly varied in quality. Urban Legend, Scream 3 and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer were especially dreadful whilst the original I Know What You Did Last Summer was a great idea gone very awry. Still, allowing fans such as myself a chance to relive the ‘good old days’ (in a packed cinema to boot), I was one of the people who welcomed the new slasher boom with open arms. Cherry Falls, I have to say, sounded like being one of the most interesting to date. It has the premise that the killer only slaughters virgins (thus satirising the unwritten rule of the Friday the 13th/ Halloween films and their inferior rip-offs), and initial word was that this was going to be full of gruesome special effects. Yet, Cherry Falls fails as a comedy. The simple reason for this is because the premise is too grim and the murders are too nasty (the killer carves ‘virgin’ into the exposed thighs of nubile young girls). Furthermore, the film’s gory scenes were heavily cut by its distributors, who got weak kneed in the wake of the current campaign against violent horror films in America (Cherry Falls went direct to cable in America). What is left is a well paced, mean spirited, very violent but not in the least bit scary slasher movie which, premise and budget aside, plays exactly like any of the films that filled up Drive In Cinemas twenty years ago. Brittany Murphy (from Clueless) plays the daughter of Sheriff Michael Biehn, who finds herself in the midst of a murder mystery which links back to her father. As aforementioned, the killer is wiping out virgins (‘It’s hymen holocaust’ exclaims one soon to be victim), and the whole logic behind this is, to be honest, not very convincing and a bit shit. Moreover, the pathetic assumption that a rape victim is likely to become a wicked and nasty person is very offensive indeed. Oh yeah, and the ‘mystery’ killer is very easy to guess. Yet, in saying all that, Cherry Falls is probably the nastiest of the postmodern stalker films, and it has, cuts aside, the bloodiest finale of any mainstream film that I’ve seen in quite some time. The film doesn’t exactly aim high, but as far as slasher films go this is still a lot better than many of the twenty year old culprits that currently gather dust on the shelves of your local video shop. I’d certainly say that Cherry Falls is one of the better Scream variants, but I’m not so sure it’s such a worthwhile purchase. It’s definitely no classic, although I will admit that the CGI enhanced (and Tenebrae influenced) axe through the head gag begs for you to hit the rewind button.

Extras: Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. A short featurette and a brief behind-the-scenes job does not a quality disc make! On the plus side, the picture quality is first class (and enhanced for widescreen television sets) and the sound is faultless... but we deserve more than these miserly ‘extras’. Bah humbug.