WHERE Scary Movie is a spoof of all teen slasher movie rites, rules and rituals, Cherry Falls turns one convention on its head, and the clue lies in the punning title.

Usually, the vengeful serial killer makes worm meat of the sexually proactive sixth-graders, but in Cherry Falls, the traditionally protected species of virgins are the victims of the splatter-festival. As in cherry falls, geddit?

When word spreads that there's a psycho with a thing for the slaughter of the innocents, the usual teen sport of kiss-and-chase with the chaste is thrown overboard at George Washington High School, in the small town of Cherry in where else but Virginia. Suddenly, there is no time to be lost in organising the Pop Your Cherry Ball: sacrifice chastity or risk sacrificing your life to the slasher with the feminine features yet strangely male gait.

In this virginal predicament, the town sheriff's Goth daughter (Brittany Murphy) is torn between her Beavis and Butthead boyfriend (Gabriel Mann) and her new crush, the pale and interesting loner English teacher (Jay Mohr).

The uptight sheriff (Michael Biehn) is in a pickle of his own, along with the high-school head, for they are burdened with a shared dark secret from a drunken night 27 years ago - the root of the killer spree, it emerges.

The body count rises, the false leads mount up, the small-town paranoia tightens its grip, but for all the initial subversion and satirical potential of the plot line, that Cherry Falls pun is as good as Geoffrey Wright's tacky horror show gets. Missing the ripe opportunity to send up the testosterone-driven sexual stereotypes of high-school horror movies, Cherry Falls instead settles for playing to the A Nightmare On Elm Street formula, proficiently but without inspiration. Cherry Fails.