I can tell you right now that All Cheerleaders Die, written and directed by Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson, is my favorite genre film of the year so far. The horror-comedy is available on VOD now and is recommended viewing for genre fans who are looking for something different. The movie won’t be for everybody, but for those of us for whom it does work, boy, does it work well.

Nerdist had the opportunity to speak with actress Sianoa Smit-McPhee about being a part of the film, playing “witch mother” to a bunch of cheerleaders, and how it’s not easy to explain the genre blending flick.

“It’s so hard to pin down what it is,” said Smit-McPhee, who plays high school goth Leena Miller. “I think everyone should just watch it and you’ll probably like it. If you reject the trailer or something and think, ‘Oh, that’s not my kind of movie,’ you’re missing so much more of what the movie is about than just the thirty seconds we showed you. Its super exciting and fun.”

Despite being hard to explain, I’ll try: All Cheereleaders Die is about a group of cheerleaders… who die. Leena, who happens to be very close to one of the cheerleaders, witnesses the fatal accident and uses the witchy powers that she’s been cultivating over the years to bring the squad back to life. This leads to a lot of weird happenings, but maybe weirdest of all, the girls from different sides of the school yard actually become friends. Smit-McPhee explains, “Because they [the cheerleaders] know she brought them back to life, they get around to that idea and facing that idea, we all kind of get really close. I’m their weird witch mother or something and we have a really close bond towards the end of the film which is — you don’t really ever see that in a film so it’s nice. It’s cool…. We all had a really tight bond [on set] because we were working on a really low budget and there wasn’t trailers and all of that, there was a room where we could all hang out… [T]he girls were always hanging out with each other whenever they had breaks so I think that also worked on screen, it played off really well.”

The movie has sex, magic, laughs, blood, gore, and lots of cheerleading skirts and it also ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. Could there be a follow up? “From the beginning of this film, we totally wanted to do another… We’re just going to see how the release of this goes and it’s kind of up to the people. So if they really like this film and respond to it, we can talk about making another film so now it’s in the public’s hands. If they like it, then we’re allowed to make another.”

All Cheerleaders Die, written and directed by Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson and starring Caitlin Stasey, Sianoa Smit-McPhee, Brooke Butler, and Tom Williamson, is available on VOD now.