Backspot: Ace Drama Spotlights Perils and Athleticism of Cheerleading

By Chris Knight

Rating: A-

The backspot, for those who don’t know — and before watching this movie, that included me — is the cheerleader who spots the top girl during a routine. Someone goes flying in the air? Backspot catches her. Someone lands badly? Might be backspot’s fault.

In Backspot, Riley (Devery Jacobs of Reservation Dogs and Rhymes for Young Ghouls) is a high-school backspot who gets recruited into an upper-tier cheerleading squad called the Thunderhawks, along with her girlfriend Amanda (Kudakwashe Rutendo). It’s a difficult, pressure-filled position, and it plucks Riley’s already high anxiety to an even greater vibrato.

D.W. Waterson cowrote and directed the film, based on a five-minute short of the same name from 2017, also starring Jacobs. It’s wonderful for its restraint, and for the things it doesn’t do. (Read our interview with the director).

For instance, Riley’s anxiety manifests itself not in self-mutilation or an eating disorder — Hollywood’s go-to I’ve-got-problems signposts — but in a relatively benign surfeit of eyebrow plucking, hastily covered with makeup.

Then there are her new coaches, ably played by Evan Rachel Wood and Thomas Antony Olajide. Yes, they’re intense, authoritarian figures (who nevertheless insist on being called by their first names) but they slowly reveal a few foibles and weaknesses. One even becomes something of a rock for Riley to cling to, briefly, when things get rough.

Some viewers may yearn for a little more drama — between Riley and her girlfriend, or Riley and her mom (Shannyn Sossamon as a flinty, fragile, not-quite-there parent) or Riley and some of the other members of the squad. But I found just enough emotion to fill the film’s 92 minutes without it feeling overstuffed.

It’s also worth mentioning that Backspot is bookended with cheerleading performances — the high-powered athletic kind that it celebrates, not the “gimme an A” with pompoms variety. The opening is all closeups and POVs, a dizzying swirl that puts you in the shoes of one of the performers.

And the closing number features unexpected backing, clearly not the same song that is playing for the in-the-film audience or the characters, whose performance must be slowed down to match the tempo of what we’re hearing in the cinema. It’s a great musical creative choice.

It’s also shot in a single take, with some wild camera movements that suggest whoever is handling the camera has as much physical prowess as the squad being filmed. Three cheers for cinematography!

Backspot. Directed by D.W. Waterson. Starring Devery Jacobs, Kudakwashe Rutendo, and Evan Rachel Wood. In theatres May 31.