The Richmond-adjacent parts of Virginia that director Geoffrey Wright shot Cherry Falls in were not too welcoming once they became aware of the film’s plot. The residents were beside themselves after hearing the story’s killer was preying on teen virgins. According to Fangoria #196, a local op-ed lambasted the film before its release, going as far as to say it had “no heart, no originality, no conscience, and no soul.”
Considering the historical relationship between sex and death in all the slashers that came before Cherry Falls though, would the detractors have felt more comfortable if the film’s villain only slaughtered the sexually active? Slicing up the chaste was somehow out of the question, but perhaps a conventional slasher would have been more to their liking.
Cherry Falls is more complicated than its elevator pitch, although it admittedly starts off like other slashers before hurtling toward unknown territory. In the film’s suburban namesake, a fictional small town in Virginia, teenage Rod and Stacy (Jesse Bradford, Bre Blair) are necking in the woods one night when a car suddenly pulls up behind them. The driver, a woman in black whose face is obscured by her hair the entire time, then offs the lovers. Elsewhere on the same night, Jody Marken (Brittany Murphy) rebuffs the sexual advances of her boyfriend, Kenny Ascott (Gabriel Mann). These two scenes have similar setups; they show young couples in the throes of passion before the girlfriends slam on the brakes. Aside from the obvious murder aspect, the most glaring difference between these intimate displays is the outcome. Rod is understanding with Stacy, whereas Kenny breaks up with Jody on the spot.
A notable takeaway from classic slashers is sex leads to death. Be it frisky campers interrupted by a killer, or parked teens caught off guard by a violent peeper, the subgenre has a long tradition of punishing sexuality and rewarding abstinence. Celibacy offering an ounce of karmic protection against murderers and monsters was more or less implied until Scream made everyone fully conscious of the plot fixture. Cherry Falls writer Ken Selden, on the other hand, sidesteps the self-awareness innate to turn-of-the-millennium horror. He and Wright deconstruct slashers’ sexual politics without scoffing too loudly in the same breath.
Teen films by and large are fixated on sex because it is an exceedingly relatable topic for both storytellers and audiences. Other adolescent stories have their characters feeling mortified if they graduate high school with their virginities intact, but Cherry Falls’ characters chase carnal pleasure because their lives are at stake. They seek agency in a dire situation. The typical social repercussion of not doing the deed is accounted for; two couples break up with disparate levels of fuss involved. The film then presents an unprecedented consequence of chastity after a third murder establishes a pattern.
From Halloween to Friday the 13th, there is an unmistakable death sentence attached to sex scenes in horror. The antagonist has a bizarre habit of appearing during or after coitus. Of course the characters have no inkling of what fornication incurs, but like many American high schools, horrors of yesteryear routinely promote abstinence by showing the unduly negative effects of having sex. Then comes along Cherry Falls, a neo-slasher that turns the whole idea on its head. In any other film, a man like Jody’s father, Sheriff Marken (Michael Biehn), would be outraged at the thought of his daughter going past first base, but here he is disappointed when he learns his little girl is still on the assailant’s radar. Jody always seeks her father’s approval and thinks staying “pure” is the best way to get it. Imagine her surprise when she essentially now has permission to go all the way.
In the past, the “final girl” character was inexperienced with most things. If there was any sex to be had in her film, it was usually among her friends. Jody, who is by default not like other predestined slasher survivors thanks to her black-on-black attire and Murphy’s raw performance, breaks the mold even further once word gets around about the killer’s hankering for virgins. In a role reversal, she is now less inhibited, as evident by her reunion with Kenny. Jody pounces on Kenny after a round of footsie foreplay, but he stops her for a change; he suspects Jody is only with him again for practical reasons.
The boyfriend can either be pushy or respectful about sex; there is no set standard in horror. Meanwhile, Kenny is seen as a jerk when he first breaks up with Jody. The truth of the matter is that Kenny deeply associates sex with love, and since they never did much more than kissing after dating for a year, he assumed Jody did not return his feelings. So while Cherry Falls is neither the first nor last slasher to switch things up in the boyfriend-girlfriend department, it stands out when looking at how films from this era of horror revised long-standing gender roles and expectations.
When the student body learns of the killer’s M.O., they organize a massive orgy inside an old house. Throwing a party in these deadly times always spells doom for those involved, but the young folks here are coming together as a means of protecting themselves. What was once a death penalty in slashers is now the best chance for survival.
As risqué as a modern bacchanalia for teens sounds though, the event itself is not remotely racy. There is no collective copulation beneath a “sea of white sheets,” and there is certainly no full-frontal nudity either. Selden did not set out to make an especially gory film, but his biggest set piece was in fact castrated by the MPAA. The horror genre specifically felt the heat following the Columbine High School shooting. A major rewrite was required to avoid being hit with an X rating. As a result, the buildup toward an unbridled sex-for-all is for all for nothing, seeing as the orgy turns into a glorified sleepover with more heavy petty than actual sex. However, in the final cut’s defense, this flaccid version is fitting for a bunch of horny yet awkward teenagers who only talk a big game.
Without revealing the killer’s identity, Cherry Falls sharply falls on familiar ground by connecting the past to the present. The villain’s motive is fueled by generational trauma. Slashers have been dismissed as puerile and lightweight, yet looking back through the whole subgenre, there are stories that emphasize the antagonist’s harrowing origin. The killer struggles to make sense of their own unbearable pathos as best they can in these films, and they then cope with their emotional injuries by inflicting physical pain onto others. Simply put, hurt people hurt people. Cherry Falls’s biggest shock stems from the reveal of not the killer’s identity but how they reached this point of no return, and who among the main cast has everything to do with their tragic upbringing.
The struggle between prudery and creativity continues two decades after Cherry Falls was first released in a post-Columbine world. Sexless filmmaking is on the go these days, but like slashers, sex is bound to make a comeback in cinema sooner or later. It remains unclear if fans will see an uncut version of Cherry Falls anytime soon. In its only available form though, Wright and Selden’s collaboration is still a solid jumping-off point for discourse on sexual intercourse in horror. The film is audacious and thought provoking even in its sterilized state.
Horror contemplates in great detail how young people handle inordinate situations and all of life’s unexpected challenges. While the genre forces characters of every age to face their fears, it is especially interested in how youths might fare in life-or-death scenarios.
The column Young Blood is dedicated to horror stories for and about teenagers, as well as other young folks on the brink of terror.
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