Review: Eileen Rachel Wood
D.W. Waterson’s ‘Backspot’ has glittery sleeves and gay, gritty cheerleaders
The Yearning Rating: ✰✰✰
Romance: ✰✰✰
Sex: ✰
Storytelling: ✰✰✰
Performance: ✰✰✰✰
Yearning: ✰✰✰✰
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Only a few teensy tiny little spoilers in this one.
Written by Meg Steinfeld-Heim
I’m going to make a bold statement and say that, regardless of your age, gender, or general station in life, there is one thing that stays engaging—and that is watching people do flips through the air. There, I said it!! Feel however you want to feel about the culture surrounding the sport, but cheerleading is visually captivating, technically impressive and also silly, all at once. This cultural fixation is undeniably present in the queer zeitgeist; Bring It On, But I’m a Cheerleader, even Isabel, the queer cheerleader in Bottoms. Cheerleading requires incredible physical strength, coordination and skill to achieve—especially at the high levels of competition we’ve grown familiar with from docuseries like Netflix’s Cheer. The near-excessive levels of time commitment and very real risk of serious injury contribute to a morbid sort of intrigue; how can something literally called “cheer leading” have such a potent risk factor? It falls into one of many AFAB-dominated sports that so often get written off as minor leagues.
Backspot drops you right into the middle of practice, with some Challengers-esque POV footage of a bouncy, energized tumbling routine. It’s practice for the lower squad, and while we can immediately tell that Riley (Devery Jacobs) takes her backspot role seriously, the energy overall is youthful, silly, and joyful—she has time between conditioning runs to spin her smiley girlfriend, Amanda (Kudakwashe Rutendo) in circles and steal kisses. The backspot is a natural leader for the squad; they call out counts for the team and are positioned at the back of a stunt group to support the flyer from behind and prevent them from falling. They need to be strong, aware, and react quickly when things go wrong.
But you immediately get the sense that Riley just wants more, and she wants it so bad—she spies longingly on the upper level squad, the Thunder Hawks, after practice and reviews her practice footage nightly. At a cheer team sleepover, she jumps down the throat of someone questioning the ethics of the sport, with a kind of iconic line: “Let us wear our fucking bows and do our fucking flips and shut up.” Yes, mama. When Riley lies awake at night, consumed with her routine and unable to rest or relax, she indulges in a nervous, compulsive habit of pulling out her own eyebrow hairs, one by one.
When the coach of the Thunder Hawks, Eileen (EVAN RACHEL WOOD <3) stops by Riley’s squad’s practice to recruit a few additional cheerleaders before Nationals, it seems like everything Riley’s ever wanted is coming true. She, Amanda, and their bestie Rachel (Noa DiBerto) all make the cut. But what was once just a ticket to the Big Leagues, instead becomes an opportunity for Riley to examine her priorities and learn to separate her fierce personal drive from her low self-worth and propensity to be unkind to herself.
Evan Rachel Wood is SO HOT IN THIS MOVIE. Me watching Evan Rachel Wood be Coach Eileen: 🤬! Her role is 30% withering stares, 40% clasped hands and a jawline that could cut glass, and 30% saying “Good girl”. PHEW. So hard to pick a favorite moment of hers, but one has to be when she checks her phone and lesbo-signals to Riley and Amanda by saying, “Oh. Sorry. Ex-wife.” Cue the squealing; I remember delighting over my own lesbian English teacher in high school.
As the final cheer competition draws closer, Riley pushes herself harder and harder in practice—this is where we get the gritty, badass cheerleading montage that I was craving the whole movie. Amped up music, fun tricks and a very sweaty Devery Jacobs in the shower (I am looking respectfully) all gave me quintessential Stick It/She’s the Man vibes. When Assistant Coach Devon (Thomas Antony Olajide) lets it slip that the stern, distant Eileen likes Riley, that fuels her increasing obsession with performing even more so. She seems constantly on the verge of physical or emotional collapse and she strains harder and harder for that validation. She begins to alienate her girlfriend and best friend, who seem to have been pushed so hard by the Thunder Hawks that all the fun of their sport has been stripped away for them.
But no matter how well Riley performs, she doesn’t feel any better. Her anxiety gets worse and worse, each eyebrow thinning into nothing due to her nervous habit. Things aren’t good at home; it seems Riley can barely communicate with her self-deprecating mom and distant dad. This just fuels her obsession to be good.
What I think Backspot does best is demonstrate really subtle, moving examples of how affected we are as kids and teens by the emotional states of our parents and caretakers. Anxiety, fear, low self esteem—these are all modeled for us and are, in many ways, learned behaviors. Teenagers are such fraught, magical emotional sponges! Watching Devery Jacobs navigate the experience of someone who just wants something so bad and, as a result, takes every setback so, so hard is really gripping. I really related to Riley in these moments—something I’ve been exploring in my own life is that fixation on control. Oftentimes, wanting so badly for something to work out in a specific way is a way of displacing and devaluing focus on your own life and autonomy because you don’t feel you deserve it. Plus, it’s exhausting. Riley’s is a story about taking everything too hard and what can come crashing down on you as a result. When Riley turns to Devon for support, on the verge of an emotional breakdown because of her fear of disappointing Eileen, he delivers the ultimate cut the black-and-white-thinking-bullshit line: “She’s just a person. Everyone’s just a fucking person”.
There are a few montages and quintessential, trope-y “I’m a teenager” beats in this movie that felt heavy-handed and took me out of the really lovely emotional arcs that Riley goes through. But there is a genuine heart to this movie and it played out so well through the final sequences—Eileen always comes back to “presentation”: Are you smiling enough? Are you making the routine look easy? Do you look like you’re having fun? I loved watching Riley grit and grimace her way through the finale. Backspot reminds you that expressing what you’re actually feeling on the inside is not wrong or unpalatable. It just is.
Backspot is in theaters now.
