The Cheerleader Murders (2016) Reviews

• As memorable as my first teeth cleaning

  Ed-Shullivan2018-10-25

  This made for television movie is listed as a "Thriller" genre but in reality it should be rated as "a waste of time". There is little mystery as to the reasons why murders and missing girls seem to follow Ellie around. I guess the suspense is supposed to unfold as the cheerleader Ellie (Samantha Boscarino) decides to travel by car to remote sites all by herself as she tries to play our amateur sleuth. Such corny writing that even the dumbest movie viewer can see through the directors blatant attempt at creating suspense when what is really happening is a flagrant abuse of some cheap background music to try and keep our attention. Nothing to see here. I rate this made for TV film a 3 out of 10, and hopefully there will not be a sequel.

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• Easy on the Eyeliner

  wes-connors2016-04-29

  Here's the set-up… Startlingly full-figured 13-year-old Samantha Boscarino (as Ellie Davis) thinks she is cursed. A van full of partying cheerleaders apparently crashes. Next, a young man appears to expire at a party. Finally, another young man enters Ms. Boscarino's house and shoots half her family. The last shot occurs off camera. That could be a suicide, or an unseen family cat. The important part of what you saw in the opening minutes was the murder of Boscarino's father and sister. The other stuff is part of the curse. Three years later, Boscarino is a sweet 16-year-old high school student. Her cheerleader friends mysteriously disappear and it seems like the curse has returned to frighten Boscarino and quite possibly take her life... The words "Inspired by True Events" introduce this TV movie... It does not seem possible that a real "curse" was at work here and the story offers no evidence. Now and then, a dead character seemingly offers support. Possibly, the curse and its connection to a ghost or imaginary character were clearer in writer Matt Young's original story. Director David Jackson, with Eric Potter's editing, moves "The Cheerleader Murders" around by artfully positioning characters into scenes with surprise and relating events with quick inter-cutting. There is very little to warrant this attention, however. Boscarino is very attractive. Her boyfriend Austin Lyon (as Nicholas "Nic" Ryder) is stable (until his final scene). Devin Crittenden (as Ben Forester) is sufficiently creepy, but you may be better off watching the eyeliner. **** The Cheerleader Murders (4/9/16) David Jackson ~ Samantha Boscarino, Austin Lyon, Tessie Santiago, Devin Crittenden

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• Utterly unrealistic

  justchillz2016-06-12

  This is certainly written by someone with no knowledge of policing, FBI and detective work when it comes to missing persons cases, abductions and murder. It makes the mom, FBI and police look utterly daft. Two school girls were abducted at knife point. The movie doesn't show you what the unsub (unknown subject) did with the girls right after he abducted them. In fact, it doesn't even show you how he abducted the girl in the shower. Did he kill her there? No one saw him carry the girls into his car? The things that happened in the house should have been shown in the movie. These are all important parts of the movie in my opinion. The movie doesn't focus on the victims' experiences at all. Instead they show you stupid scenes of her talking to her dead father, sister and friend. Unrealistic-parts: The mom just leaves to go and get groceries after the daughter just randomly asks her to cook something, knowing the police told her to stay with the daughter. No mother in her right mind would leave her daughter alone at home, knowing a deranged lunatic may be after her. It was also so obvious that the daughter's request for a special dish was part of a ploy to get her mom out of the house. No mother would be that daft to not suspect that her daughter was up to something. This part of the movie was just plain dumb. The ending was utterly absurd, like a high school student who knows nothing about how the police catch serial killers wrote this. The person who wrote this needs to watch some crime shows. They find out who went shopping for some questionable supplies (although they never tell you what those were) and right off the bat, they assume it is the son and he acted alone. The odds of their being only one assailant involved in the abduction of two high school girls, at the same, are already pretty low -- most work in pairs (e.g., Paul Bernardo and Karla Hamolka) -- the odds of a high school boy pulling that off on his own are less than .05%. The first thing the police would be trying to rule out was whether the father and son were working together; they would have at least suspected the father had knowledge and tried to rule that out before they would RELEASE him. Both the father and son would have been in police custody. There is no way they would be so daft. He would have been arrested too, not just the son, and put in a holding cell until police finished running forensics and questioning both of them. They certainly would have checked the knife for finger prints before deciding the son was guilty of murder. The father could be framing his son for the crime because he is still under the age of 18 and would not receive capital punishment nor a life sentence. This does happen and kids too cover for their parents. Police would be working on ruling this out before locking the son up for murder. The police and FBI would NEVER have showed up to his house without a search warrant. If the father declined to permit them to search the house, he would have had enough time to discard valuable evidence needed by the police. The police had enough to get a search warrant, which guaranteed that they would have entry into the home. After finding the knife and car with blood in the trunk, they would have arrested both of them because real police would suspect the father was involved or at least knew about the crime. The father would have been the first they would interrogate because he could give up the son. If they suspected the son, they would have questioned the father to death before they began to question the son. Everything they had was circumstantial evidence at best. A few shopping receipts; the blood in the trunk of that car, which could have come from a deer or other animal. They didn't even know whether the knife they found was in fact the one used in the murder. NON-SENSE. If police could arrest people that easily for murder, O. J. Simpson would not be a free man right now. The movie makes the high school girl appear more intelligent than the adults in the film (FBI, police, her mom) when she's the most daft. She chases after a car and breaks into a house with no mobile phone or weapons to defend herself, nearly getting herself killed and getting her friend killed, who could have been rescued, if this girl were smarter. She thinks she's like superwoman in her little cheerleader uniform. She decides to visit her friends memorial without her boy friend, just cancelling on him so callously while he's waiting for her at the bleachers. She also lies to the mom. She knows a lunatic is after her and she wants to be his bate. The boy friend is waiting for her, and worst of all, she cancels on him via text. The 15 year old who wrote this only put that part in, so that she would be chasing the kidnapper alone by car and subsequently breaking into his house on her own. A smart person would never go to a suspects home alone EVER, with no phone, without telling anyone where she is, without even a knife as a weapon, and MOST especially not in a little cheerleader uniform which was like her asking to get raped first, then, killed.

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• nothing special

  SnoopyStyle2017-09-18

  Ellie Davis feels cursed after her sister's possessive ex breaks in and kills her sister, her dad, and then himself. It's 3 years later. She is best friends with fellow cheerleaders Morgan and Dee. Creepy Ben is obsessed with Dee. Morgan flirts with Coach Reeves. Ellie is taken with football quarterback Nicholas. Don is his father. Morgan and Dee go missing. Ellie finds the bloody crime scene. She starts getting mysterious warning messages. Samantha Boscarino is in her early 20s playing 17. That's fairly standard for TV movies. She's perfectly fine otherwise. I can do without the dream sequence especially if they're done poorly. This is par for the course with these TV murder mysteries. The tension couldn't rise too high and the reveal is nothing special.

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• waste of viewing time

  geoffox-766-4184672016-07-05

  Another of these teen age silly films. Leading lady. Samantha Boscarino, is no exception. In fact she is a real bore. Running around being Nancy Drew solving murders. The unrealistic part is that she gets in and out of forbidden places and never caught. The mother is just as worse. Being total nuisances. I keep wanting to see the little bothersome girl to get caught. Somebody needs to knock her down and out. Annoying and bothersome involving all around her in her silly nonsensical search for the killer. Her acting really was bad and the plot as bad. And that hair - ugh. Too much mop on her head. What is with these little actresses with all this hair that makes them look like they all have huge heads. Her acting ability consists of constantly playing with her too long hair. Every other movement is to push her hair back. Did you ever hear of bobby pins? You want to grab a pair of scissors and cut the damn crap off. She also has an annoying of going around with her mouth open most of the time. Hope to see less of her. As for the others in this dumb movie they are forced to play their parts, badly. I have no rating or grade for this silly film. Can you leave a minus rating?

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