Cheerleaders and horror have a long history together. From Satan’s Cheerleaders (1977) to Cheerleader Camp (1988) to the much more recent Bring it On: Cheer or Die (2022) and everything in-between, cheering and screaming make a great cinematic pairing.
The newest entry in the cheer-horror subgenre is Cheer Bloody Murder. The story looks like a Scream-like whodunit slasher. It’s set at a prestigious cheerleading camp where someone in a mask (which has more than a passing resemblance to Ghostface) is knocking people off one by one.
Cheer Bloody Murder was directed by Shawn C. Phillips, the same director behind other micro-budget horrors including Desert Fiends 1 & 2, Skate to Hell, Amityville Karen, Pay To Die, and Mistletoe Massacre. Phillips told Bloody Disgusting that Cheer Bloody Murder was the first feature he directed, so it must have been made prior to those other movies I just listed.
Lauren Francesca was Phillips’ co-director in a few of his more recent films (like Mistletoe Massacre and Pay To Die), and she is featured in the cast of Cheer Bloody Murder.
Joining Francesca in the cast are many familiar faces for fans of horror, and especially, but not exclusively, micro-budget horror. In the cast are Scout Taylor-Compton (Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies), Robert LaSardo (Desert Fiends), Caleb Thomas (Big Freaking Rat), Kelly Lynn Reiter (The Teenage Vampire), Sean Whalen (The People Under the Stairs), Vernon Wells (The Road Warrior), Julie Anne Prescott (Amityville Shark House), Tom Sizemore (Natural Born Killers), James Duval (Donnie Darko), Todd Bridges (Diff’rent Strokes), and director Shawn C. Phillips who has acted in TONS of low-budget movies.
Cheer Bloody Murder is scheduled for a digital release on December 15, 2026.
