The Cheerleader Sleepover Slaughter (2022)

Directed by Christopher Leto [Other horror films: If I Can’t Have You… (2010), The Housewife Slasher (2012), Die Die Delta Pi (2013), Rough Cut (2013), Theatre of the Deranged II (2013, segment ‘My Aunt is Coming to Town’), Crazy Lake (2016), Sammy Slick: Vampire Slayer (2023), Psycho Science (2024)]

I was careful to approach this one with mild expectations. From the first time I saw the title, I wanted to give this one a go, but I also knew that the chances it’d be a good movie were somewhat slim. Luckily, though, my hesitation wasn’t borne out, and while The Cheerleader Sleepover Slaughter certainly had some flaws, I thought it was a decently fun movie.

For a lower-budget independent film, I thought the production value looked quite nice. It reminded me a bit of Truth or Double Dare (TODD), albeit with quite a bit more feeling. This was apparently filmed in Florida (in New Port Richey and Oldsmar, specifically), which was fun. While I was watching it, I got the sense it was a coastal community, but I was thinking the Northeast, perhaps in Maine or Massachusetts, so I was half right.

To be fair to those who didn’t care for this one, it is true that there’s some obvious padding here. Given the total length of the movie is just an hour and two minutes, it’s not like they padded the hell out of it, but there were two scenes which definitely could have been cut down – we see the cheer squad performing their moves during a game, which is something like a two-and-a-half minute sequence, and we also get two minutes of a ‘twerk off.’ Certainly I can imagine worse ways to spend time, but even so, that sequence didn’t just look ridiculous, but also felt longer than necessary.

It’s also true that the movie doesn’t really reinvent anything. There’s nothing new or innovative here. I did appreciate the opening titles of the film – it’s designed as though the cast and crew were in a yearbook, so that was cute – but everything here’s been done before. The kills weren’t great, the finale was just so-so, and given the film’s so short, it’s not like we got a whole lot of understanding on the characters we had.

And boy, were there characters.

I’m not great with faces. If I don’t know the actor or actress, I’m screwed, and so I often keep a handwritten list of the characters and, if possible, any attributes I can link to them (for instance, black wavy hair, or straight bleach blonde hair). It’s quite useful when watching slasher films that can have 8+ different people who, to me, all look quite similar.

Here, we have Lisa (Indica Jane), Summer (Mikayla Kane), Ali (Vera Marlowe), Renee (Sydney Spaulding), Kelly (Aja Toombs), Brandy (Sydni O’Nan), Marcy (Sushii Xhyvette Holder), Kayla (Michelle Jones), and Lori (Taylor Herd), and for the guys, we had Jason (Jayden Leto), Joe (Collin O’Neill), and Bo (Beux Leto). True, the film did start out with a cheerleader roll call, with each of them calling out their names, but it still took a while to fully separate some of these characters.

On that note, it’s hard to say that there was any one stand-out performance. I really did like Jayden Leto here; I found his character fun, not to mention sassy. Taylor Herd made for a decent focus, though I’d have preferred if a bit more of her character had been delved into. The others all did well (though I think that Aja Toombs did have one bad piece of dialogue), but I don’t think any of them made a giant impression.

Oh, another thing I felt may be worth mentioning. While there’s not a ton of nudity in this film, there are a couple of spicy portions that may be of interest to the lads out there, not to mention the ladies who lean toward the ladies. I’ve largely felt I’ve grown past the point where I point out nudity in a film, but in this case, should that be something you look forward to in a movie with both “Cheerleader” and “Sleepover” in the title, you probably won’t be disappointed.

Here’s another thing that I learned throughout the course of writing this review: there’s a piece of dialogue toward the finale that rang a bell to me, dealing with murders at a sorority house. The dialogue was quite specific, and I was sure it was a reference to something. After looking through Christopher Leto’s other films, I noticed that he was one of the directors behind Die Die Delta Pi, a movie which I saw back in 2017. This movie appears to be a loose sequel. To be sure, if you’ve not seen Die Die Delta Pi, I can’t imagine you’d dislike this film any more, but it does give a piece of added context, and I’m at least glad I have vague memories of the film.

Certainly there have been better independent slasher films. One that I always have to mention is Don’t Go to the Reunion, which I found great. Still, The Cheerleader Sleepover Slasher had a lot of charm to it, and despite the padding and lack of interesting kills, I had a decent time with this one. It’s nothing mind-blowing, but if you enjoyed Bring It On: Cheer or Die, then I think this would work for you also.

7/10