Riley (Devery Jacobs) is a high school level cheerleader who is a member of a team with an OK coach (Wendy Crewson). A light sparks inside of her when she finds out that there are three spots open on a better team next door, the Thunderhawks. She, her girlfriend Amanda (Kudakwashe Rutendo), and another friend, Rachel (Noa DiBerto), tumble for them and get in. But getting in is just the beginning. Critics and PR-ers pitched D.W. Waterson’s Backspot as “the one where a cheerleader pushes herself too far”. But there’s more to it than that, as both Riley and Amanda, two queer girls, are learning things about their queer coaches Eileen McNamara (Evan Rachel Wood) and Devon Sharp (Thomas Antony Olajide).

Riley, though, is taking Eileen’s lessons at face value. Waterson, in a mostly successful attempt to mix things up, depicts Riley and Amanda’s home lives. Amanda, with a few siblings, lives with Denise (Olunike Adeliyi), who has herself together despite being a single mom. Riley, despite being in a bourgeois two parent household, comes home to a mother, Tracy (Shannyn Sossamon), with self esteem issues. Her cheer life and home life bleed into each other, making her turn to self harm practices. Despite all of this though, is she going to learn positive things in a world where quick studies survive better?

Waterson captures all of this psychological chaos and pulls the most cinematic tricks up their sleeves. Backspot has a warm place in my icy heart even if I only practised college level cheerleading for a year. Riley has to defend cheerleading, the most dangerous sport, which is akin to queer racialized people defending themselves for other reasons. Despite my one year though, I notice a few things that this film gets wrong. I understand that there are some cheerleading teams who don’t have affiliations with schools. A quick Google search confirms this much, although those teams feel bigger than the Thunderhawks and their paltry three stunt groups. 

Again, Riley, Amanda, and Rachel are there to replace girls, but as cliche as this sounds, family is irreplaceable. Backspot is a film about cheerleading but it’s its most interesting when it’s away from that sport. The scenes with Riley and Amanda are cute but the family scenes give the film heart. Even if I’d prefer to be in Amanda’s family, the film’s best scene is the one with Riley and Tracy. When Tracy gets an anxiety attack, Riley does something to soothe her the way Eileen did it the one time. Riley and Eileen have a tough love relationship, bordering on a mentor abusing their mentee. But this scene shows that people can learn good things from anyone, even from those who have done hurtful things.