BACKSPOT - Mark Reviews Movies

Backspot, XYZ Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 30, 2024

The stakes of Backspot are relatively high for Riley (Devery Jacobs), a cheerleader trying to get and then keep a spot on an exclusive competitive squad. There's the physical peril for herself and her teammates, because, despite one character's dismissal of cheer as not being a "real" sport, minor injuries are common and serious ones are a definite possibility while bodies are flipping, stretching, and being raised into the air on the not-always-stable support of other bodies.

There's also the psychological impact on Riley, who's desperate to prove she can compete with the best, and if that means dedicating herself to practice and study while sacrificing other parts of her life, she might be willing to do so. It's the shakiness of that last part that gets at the core issue of director D.W. Waterson's feature debut. The stakes of the story are here, but the drama of it feels uncertain.

Maybe that's the result of Joanne Sarazen's screenplay (an adaptation of short written and directed by Waterson) attempting to cover so much ground with its main character. Riley is already dealing with a mother (played by Shannyn Sossamon) who has issues with self-esteem, balancing cheerleading and her romantic relationship with teammate Amanda (Kudakwashe Rutendo), and experiencing anxiety to the degree that she's pulling out the hair from her eyebrow one or two at a time.

The story is adding and layering challenges for the protagonist even before the biggest challenge of her life appears and becomes personified in the character of the team's strict, no-nonsense coach. There's so much going on here that, by the time the coach appears and adds even more pressure to Riley's life, everything in this story begins to feel like an afterthought.

The coach is Eileen McNamara (Evan Rachel Wood), who expects the best of her team and runs practice with little apparent concern for her cheerleaders. There's a scene here, when Riley stops in the coach's office to make sure she hasn't messed up too much after a disastrous practice, in which Eileen makes a pretty good point about her coaching methods. She's not these athletes' mother, and while she understands these young women looking at her and seeking her approval in the way one might do with maternal figure, Eileen kind of resents the impulse. If she were a man, the cheerleaders wouldn't think of their coach in such a way, so it's as much for the team as it is for herself that Eileen is so tough.

It's refreshing to understand Eileen, who could have been a straightforward villain for Riley and her teammates, on this level, but the moment undoes the tension that has been building between Riley and her coach up until that point. The third act of this story comes down to increasing acts of rebellion against the coach, cementing the notion that Riley is becoming more comfortable with herself, her cheering skills, and her ability to manage so many aspects of her life at the same time. It's a nice sentiment, but the buildup to it is so scattershot and underdeveloped that the payoff comes across as anticlimactic.

The pieces here are intriguing, to be sure. The way Riley basically punishes herself to be the best she can be, resulting in blisters and bruises and exhaustion, is slightly unsettling, especially when that anxiety of not being worthy leads her to retreat into herself and take it out on her body. Those repeated scenes of practice give a sense of how tiring the sport can be and how much physical strain is required to do it, such as a moment when the coach orders Riley to push down on a teammate in order for the cheerleader to achieve the kind of stretch Eileen wants. The camera gets in close on muscles resisting and the poor cheerleader's hand gripping in pain.

The relationship with Amanda, who works at a movie theater to help the family's financial situation, is sweet, although Amanda seems the type to be a bit more practical and frank about how obsessed her girlfriend has become with cheer at the expense of everything else in her life. She gets there eventually, but like the mother and the coach and many other characters here, Amanda clearly exists to serve the needs of the screenplay when they arise, only occasionally feeling like people with lives outside of their connections to Riley and what she needs to hear at any given moment.

Everything comes across a bit too calculated in that way, as if every character and scene is devised to reach the conclusion—without us ever really feeling the agony and pressure within and being exerted on Riley, except in the bluntest of terms. Without that sensation, Backspot quickly becomes a repetitive and shallow study of obsession that doesn't dig deep enough into its characters or its assorted conflicts.

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