This is the first Hollywood outing for Australian director Geoffrey Wright, whose claim to fame was the excellent Romper Stomper, but none of its flair is on display here.

It's another of those teen silly slasher-horrors in which unsuspecting victims are sent to their deaths before they realise it's too late, but we've had so many of those, plus the satire Scary Movie, so does Cherry Falls have the originality it needs to stay ahead of the pack? Sadly, no.

In what seems like a plot rip-off of The Young Ones "Nasty" episode - or is it just what Vampires are into? - all the potential victims are virgins.

The principal members of the cast are 22-year-old Brittany Murphy as the 16-year-old college girl Jody Marken. At least I presume she's meant to be that age because she certainly doesn't seem to be portrayed as any older. As she comes high up in cast list, you know she'll be the Neve Campbell-type, the one who gets chased by the killer but always survives.

Her father is Sherrif Brent Marken (Michael Biehn), who wasn't always the law-abiding type he pretends to be. Jerry Maguire's Jay Mohr takes the role of soft-spoken teacher Leonard Marliston, always apparently flirting with the girls including Jody. Finally, Kenny, her two-timing other half is played by Gabriel Mann.

The reason for the killer's appearance - and the prime suspect - is the return of nerdy girl Lorelei Sherman, or is it? For her time at Cherry Falls High, the only time she got laid was when her car broke down and she was sadistically raped by four drunken college lads who were never brought to book.

Of course, you know that she won't be coming back and the killer will be one of the clan you've been staring at for 90 minutes. I normally never guess their identity as I prefer to switch my brain off and find out when all the cast do. This time I did try to apply some brain power, but I honestly didn't guess it would be (name deleted).

However, in places where you'd expect something new to happen, nothing does. As Jody runs away from the killer in their only chase scene together, I was expecting a Mute Witness stretched-corridor effect, but no, it just tracked her movements. In the next scene she climbed onto a shelf and started throwing anything at him that came to hand, although it was a bit of a laugh when she made her escape.

There's also a one-liners, such as one college-type proclaiming to his equally-virginal friends, "We're not members of the 'poontang' clan" and once the teenagers learn of the way NOT to get offed, they organise a late-night sex party, to which the headmaster labels a "fuck-fest".

There is one truly horrifying thing about this film and it's something that has to be said as there's a kind-of Jekyll & Hyde thing going on here. On the left is a picture of Brittany Murphy from the 1996 film Drive and the right is a still from Cherry Falls. Now, Brittany is actually quite a cute actress and none moreso than in this film when she begins to get her kit off, but what really turns my stomach is that she's the almost-spitting image of a previous Hitler-esque supervisor of mine (especially in the left-hand picture), but believe me when I say there's enough of a difference between a lust for one and a wish to stay a mile away from the other :)

Overall, there's one thing that surprised me here. For all its faults, dull direction and script-writing, it's rarely boring, so you won't nod off, but if you'd paid you will wish you'd seen something else.

For a slasher-horror it's relatively gore-free. Yes, there's lots of blood, but like a typical BBFC-censored porn film, all the 'action', as such, is hidden from view. People are murdered just off camera, or the direction is so clumsy you can't fully tell what's happening, so while the cinema version was a 15-certificate I'm surprised it's been upped to an 18 for video and DVD. There's a scene late on which feels like a knife-based recount of the Dunblane massacre and the killer is dispatched in a way identical to 1991's The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.

However, many of last summer's films weren't the most impressive after the disappointments of Gone in 60 Seconds, X-Men and M:I-2.

It also must be noted that for once we got to see a Hollywood film before the Americans (the last time I recall this happening was for 1991's Highlander 2: The Quickening). The UK cinema release date for Cherry Falls was August 25th, 2000, while the US release date was September 29th.

And if the auditorium you saw this in looked a bit sparse because potential punters went into different screens after reading reviews of this, see if you can beat the record number of attendees to the press screening I went to - I was the only person there!

About the best thing I can say about this DVD is that it's presented in the original 1.85:1 ratio and is anamorphic. However, the picture looks a bit on the dull side but artifacts appear minimal. The average bitrate is 5.46Mb/s occasionally peaking over 9Mb/s.

As for the sound, the box promises Dolby Digital 5.1 but it's not. It's Dolby Surround at best but it hardly ever kicks into life. Even when one girl has a real "head-banging" time of it, the SFX are as lacklustre as they could be. The Internet Movie Database indicates "Dolby" and not DD5.1 for the sound, so such a discrete soundmix may not have been created but it still doesn't make up for its limp behaviour.

The Interviews section has Brittany Murphy claiming that there's so many levels to the film, but nothing could be further from the truth. Michael Biehn said he told his agent that he didn't want to do it because there's so many slasher movies around, but still he changed his mind. Fool. Geoffrey Wright and Jay Mohr also have their say during this six-minute piece.

The four minutes of B-Roll is unedited work-in-progress footage of various scenes in the film, but after you've watched both of these extras you'll rarely go back to them.

The disc contains just a mere 16 chapters, there are no subtitles (boo!), the single menu is static and silent and with both a lack of extras and a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, this is one disc to steer well clear of.

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.

DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.

PC games reviewed by the editor are on: