Cherrypicker

Ankle Biters (or Cherrypicker) is a story about four little girls who set out on a quest to destroy their mother's love life and harm their future stepdad, Sean (Zion Forest Lee). And they do succeed in a spectacular fashion.

It starts as a spoiled child comedy and feels kinda innocent. The girls just put spider eggs in Sean's ear and put a pin in an apple he's supposed to eat. But then, well, everything goes sideways. There's gore and there's death.

I was not impressed by acting - except for the four little girls who were just great. The actresses are real-life sisters Dahlia Reed, Violet Reed, Lily Reed and Rosalie Reed, and they keep their real names in this movie. So, not much in terms of acting, and some poor dialogs. But camera work is good, and blood specal effects really deliver.

It's nuts, and it's fun.

I thought it to be funny and over the top and it just wasn't that deep to give it lower stars. If you read the premise of the movie about 4 bad lil girls, all else is expected. So, enjoyed it my movie watchers were cracking up!

Children mistake parents sex for a violent attack on their mother and seek revenge. It would work in the 1990's with much changed direction, however in an age where 90% of porn is advertised to be violent, what this movie does is condone it, mix sex scenes with children playing, and make the children ultra violent as if it's funny. The man is then victimised like a cartoon character who only makes mistakes.

What the movie needs to do is highlight the problem by turning (once normal people) violent in the bedroom, including sick grinning, then show the effect on children outside the room and follow them as the new heros. The police can then sit them down and do word association tests about what family means, and what enemies mean...

At least the synopsis for this 2021 horror comedy sounded interesting. And it was that synopsis that lured me into watching "Cherrypicker" from writers Bennet De Brabandere and Zion Forrest Lee, because I hadn't even heard about the movie prior to sitting down to watch it. And with it being a horror comedy, and a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to watch "Cherrypicker".

Well, I suppose that the script was interesting enough on paper in order for director (and writer) Bennet De Brabandere to make it into a movie. And yeah, there were certainly aspects to the script and plot that had potential. But ultimately, then "Cherrypicker" was a swing and a miss, and it director Bennet De Brabandere completely failed to deliver a movie that proved interesting, entertaining or enjoyable to me.

In fact, I managed to suffer through about half of the ordeal, then I got up and opted to abandon the movie. And believe you me, this is not a movie that I will be returning to finish watching. Why? Well, simply because the storyline wasn't interesting or entertaining, and the characters written into the storyline were fairly bland, and also the acting performances were sort of mundane.

"Cherrypicker" was a swing and a miss. A shame really, because the synopsis definitely made the movie sound like something that could and would be a fun horror comedy to watch.

Now, I can't recommend you waste your time, money or effort on this particular movie.

My rating of "Cherrypicker" lands on a very generous two out of ten stars.

Explores childish potential for extreme violence. The four leads are actual sisters and very cute and quite spoopy. Takes place at a nice lake so there's plenty of fun swimming fun. Including the other girl, Mattia, who in the male lead's words has become "jailbait". Its not great, some scenes drag or don't go anywhere. Needed more scenes with the little girl leads, maybe something to differentiate any of them besides "she's the younger one". The effects look fine for what there is of them.

I docked it points because there is a long shot on a pack of cigarettes clearly inserted just to promote smoking. Didn't give it a 1 because they aren't shown to be used.