Deadly Cheer Mom is a 2022 Tubi original Teen Drama/Thriller movie, produced by MarVista Entertainment and directed by Doug Campbell, with a screenplay by Lauren Balson Carter.
Beth Hartford (Tommi Rose) is the star cheerleader at Bridgebay High School, and finds herself named cheer captain. There's some grumbling over this, because her mother Deb (Mena Suvari) just happens to be the school's cheer coach. Beth is also competing with several of her teammates for a cheer scholarship at Rossmore Carmel University, and seems to have the inside track for it. But when a deepfake video of Beth drinking tequila and dissing her teammates goes viral, along with some other incriminating deepfakes, Beth must fight to prove she was framed, with spiteful teammate Ashley (Jazzy Kae Williams) and her pushy mom Marisol (Karla Mosley) as the main suspects.
Although it debuted on Tubi, it looks and feels like a Lifetime original movie, which shouldn't be surprising since the director, writer, production company, and several of the actresses are Lifetime regulars, and it fits squarely into Lifetime's "cheerleader thriller" subgenre, though its tone is slightly Darker and Edgier than the usual Lifetime fare.
It can be seen here
. No relation to the earlier Lifetime movie Killer Cheer Mom, though they share a similar villain and are both toplined by well-known actresses (in that movie's case, Denise Richards).
Deadly Cheer Mom contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: While they seem to be a perfectly fine mother/daughter team, it's eventually revealed that Rebecca loathes her daughter Olivia, subjecting her to verbal abuse like calling her a "little bitch" and saying "I should've aborted you the minute I had the chance!"
- Antihero: Beth and Deb are sympathetic for being unfairly targeted by the deepfakes, but there's still a running subtext throughout the story of Deb showing blatant favoritism toward her daughter, and Beth being spoiled, entitled and irresponsible because of it. They both seem to have a Heel Realization brought on by the Downer Ending.
- Bitch Alert: The Establishing Character Moment for Marisol is when she confronts Deb and berates her for making Beth the team captain.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Marisol and Ashley appear to be the only people who have any problems with Deb and Beth, but eventually several seemingly nice characters are revealed to be part of the deepfake plot, especially Liv and her mother Rebecca.
- Bond One-Liner: Liv after delivering a fatal blow to Rebecca with a baseball bat."Who's the little bitch now?"
- The Dog Bites Back: Having been treated horribly by her mother even as they plotted against Beth, Olivia gets revenge on her at the climax.
- California University: Beth is trying to get a cheer scholarship to Rossmore Carmel, and Grant wants to go there too so he can be with her.
- Cassandra Truth: Beth correctly deduces that Violet, who's studying animation made the deepfakes, but she gets gaslighted out of that belief when she confronts the person with her suspicion.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Olivia plots with her mother Rebecca to take down Beth, then turns around and kills Rebecca by knocking her out with a baseball bat.
- Cliffhanger: The ending leaves it unresolved whether the truth about Liv murdering Rebecca will ever come out, leading to speculation that it was a deliberate Sequel Hook.
- Cryptic Background Reference: A few lines from Deb establishes that her ex-husband (and Beth's father) had substance abuse issues, but the exact nature of them and how the marriage ended are never discussed.
- Digital Head Swap: Someone is taking Beth's social media videos and altering them so she appears to be drinking, smoking weed, and saying nasty things about her teammates. Eventually a video of Beth and Deb together taken without their knowledge and altered is used against them.
- Downer Ending: Beth gets successfully framed by Olivia for the death of Olivia's mother Rebecca and ends the movie in jail, while Olivia uses the sympathy factor from being orphaned to win the Rossmore Carmel scholarship.
- False Confession: Beth lies and tells the principal that she made the first video so she can get out of detention and continue the college cheer workshop.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Rebecca and her daughter Liv spend most of the movie being neutral, friendly background characters, but are ultimately revealed as the masterminds of the plot against Beth.
- Gaslighting: It's not apparent until the climax, but practically everyone in the movie except Deb is doing this to Beth, including several crucial misdirections when she seems to start figuring things out.
- Hollywood Hacking: Deepfake videos, which currently require expensive equipment and vast knowledge to do correctly, are shown in this movie to be a matter of fairly simple copying and pasting.
- Idiot Ball: Beth almost immediately deletes the initial texts threatening her and sending her the first deepfake video, rather than reporting them, which she soons comes to regret. Her False Confession while in detention counts as well.
- In the Hood:
- When Beth digs up footage of the culprit uploading the deepfake video in the gym, the person is wearing a black hoodie.
- In the opening scene, the person shown doing the Digital Head Swap on their computer is wearing a hoodie as well. Why they would need to shroud themselves sitting at home alone at night is uncertain.
- Karma Houdini: Liv masterminds the deepfakes to ruin Beth's life, then murders her own mother and frames Beth for it, and not only doesn't get caught, she wins the scholarship and steals Beth's boyfriend Grant.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Violet is established early on as preferring relationships with girls (with the other cheerleaders gossiping about her breakup with her girlfriend), but as a (former) cheerleader she's decidedly feminine. And this apparently goes for Sarah as well.
- Lovable Alpha Bitch: Beth sort of straddles the line for this. She's the squad's queen bee, but is generally nice and likable, so she's not really an Alpha Bitch. But she does mouth off a bit to Ashley, and basically backstabs Violet by convincing her mom to cut her from the team, so she's not perfect either.
- Nepotism: Deb gets accused, mainly by Marisol, of showing favoritism to her daughter Beth.Ashley: (ultra-sarcastic) Shocking! Coach's daughter makes captain!
- Never Trust a Title: The title is misleading, since the movie's one death is suffered by cheer mom Rebecca, at the hands of her daughter Olivia. The
Working Title The Cheerleader Conspiracy is much closer to the truth. - New Media Are Evil: The ultimate Aesop of the movie is a warning about sharing too much on social media and the dangers posed by sophisticated deepfake technology.
- The One Guy: Beth's boyfriend Grant is the movie's only significant male character (along with Rossmore Carmel cheer coach Teddy, who only gets a couple of scenes).
- Police Are Useless: The cops almost immediately arrest Beth, without bothering to talk to Olivia's neighbors for external confirmation of her timeline for when she got home, or to do the forensic examination that likely would've established Rebecca's fatal injury coming from being hit by a blunt object, and Olivia's fingerprints on the clothes of Rebecca and Beth.
- Red Herring: For most of the movie, it looks like Ashley and Marisol are doing the deepfakes of Beth, but it's ultimately revealed that Liv and Rebecca were paying Violet to make them.
- The Reveal: Beth and Olivia break into the principal's office to look at surveillance footage and learn that Olivia's mother Rebecca is the villain, but then it's revealed that mother and daughter are scheming together against Beth, and late in the film we learn that Violet was in on it as well, making the deepfakes.
- Self-Made Orphan: Rebecca is killed by her daughter Olivia.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Violet shows up to the fundraiser in a tight red jumpsuit with well-styled hair, and impresses the girls, especially Sarah.
- Shout-Out: In the deepfake conversation between "Beth" and "Deb".Deepfake Deb: Worse comes to worse, we pull a Tonya Harding on one of these bitches.
- The Slacker: In a lot of ways Beth qualifies, since she seems to rely on Deb and her connections to get her through life. In her conversation with Violet she even admits that she's never given much thought about what she wants to do in life besides cheerleading.
- Slipping a Mickey: Someone spikes Beth's water with Oxycodone, leading her to pass out during the Rossmore Carmel cheer workshop.
- Stage Mom:
- Marisol thinks her daughter Ashley is the squad's best cheerleader, but that Deb is holding her back to promote Beth, and the two women clash frequently.
- Deb to certain extent counts too. After being announced as team captain, Beth doesn't seem entirely happy about it, but Deb convinces her that she's genuinely the team's best cheerleader.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Almost in Ripped from the Headlines territory. The storyline was clearly inspired by the weird saga of Raffaela Spone, a Pennsylvania mom who was accused in 2021 of creating deepfake videos of her daughter's cheerleading rivals vaping, drinking and posing nude. An investigation by Cosmopolitan showed that the videos were actually real and it was some overzealous police detectives who came up with the deepfake theory, but between spreading the videos and sending threatening texts to the girls, Spone was still charged with criminal harassment and found guilty in March of 2022, just days before this movie debuted.
- Wild Teen Party: Even though it's the night before the all-important tryouts for the college scholarship, Beth sneaks out of the house and goes to one after Deb goes to bed.
