Genre: Slasher
Director: Stewart Hendler
Starring: Briana Evigan, Leah Pipes, Rumer Willis, Jamie Chung, Margo Harshman, Carrie Fisher
Running Time: 101 minutes (plus trailers)
"Theta Pi must die"
When you bring together the on-screen female talent from films including Step Up 2: The Streets, Dragonball: Evolution and College Road Trip, what results can only be a good thing. Sorority Row is a remake of the 1983 slasher film The House on Sorority Row, and tells the story of a college prank that goes horribly wrong. With a dead body on their hands, five sisters of the Theta Pi sorority (who can each be defined by their single personality trait – the hero, the bitch, the slut, the nerd and the fifth one who happens to be Asian) decide that rather than go to the police, they should drop their sisters corpse down a mine shaft and never speak of it again. Following that, they each go their separate ways, enjoy successful careers, have families, and each live well past the age of seventy five.
Ok, but seriously.
Eight months later, on the day of their graduation, each of the killers receives a disturbing text message that reveals that someone else knows about their secret. Apparently never having seen a horror film before in their lives (naturally), the group decides to go ahead with their massive going away party, and before you can say “plot inconsistency”, they’re being picked off one by one by a hooded killer who’s weapon of choice is a bladed lug wrench (which, if you have seen the film, isn’t quite as stupid as it sounds). Sorority Row is a movie that makes no attempts to do anything original or unique, but by following the tried and true slasher blueprint, it still manages to be entertaining for what it is.
My enjoyment of the film is definitely predicated on the fact that, since an inappropriately young age, I have been a huge fan of the slasher genre, and all the painfully one dimensional characters, idiotic twists, graphic violence and copious nudity that comes with it. As such, Sorority Row, which is by no means a good movie, provided me with plenty stuff to enjoy. There are a couple of interesting kills (my favourite coming very early in the film, involving a champagne bottle), some hot girls who take their clothes off (although given the films setting in a sorority house, not as much as I expected/would have liked) and…no, that’s actually about it. Nudity and violence. And if you expected anything else, then you probably haven’t watched enough of these kinds of movies.
The direction, from one Stewart Hendler, is fine, although the footage is unnecessarily grainy at points. The dialogue is pretty poor (well, ok, it's worse than poor), but the screenwriters have at least done enough to keep the story and the characters vaguely interesting. As for the acting…to be honest, it wasn’t that bad. Like most of the rest of the film I’d be hard pressed to call it good, but all the actresses are competent enough to do what is required of them – Leah Pipes as the bitch is appropriately bitchy, Rumor Willis as the nerd is appropriately nerdy, and Jamie Chung (my crush from Dragonball) as the Asian is appropriately…Asian. Best of all, they are all appropriately attractive. And if that seems shallow, it’s because it is. Just like everything else in this film.
The other thing that enhanced my enjoyment of Sorority Row was that I was lucky enough to see it under near perfect conditions – it was me, two mates, and a completely empty theatre (I guess most other people have better things to do at noon on a Saturday). So we talked loudly through the dialogue, mocked the characters and got about ten minutes in before we started guessing who the killer was, what order the characters were going to die in, and how exactly they would each meet their demise (and with more than a decade of experience, I got almost everything right).
I’d be lying if I said that this movie frightened me for even a second, but there were at least a couple of moments of mild tension during which I was invested in what was going on on screen. And to be honest, that’s all I or anyone else should expect. Sorority Row certainly isn’t worth paying money for if you’ve got a better option, but if the only alternative is homework (which for many of my readers I know it is) then I say get some friends together and go see this movie, which proves to be a fairly decent entrance into a genre that admittedly doesn’t have very high standards to begin with.
Sorority Row is in cinemas now
Director: Stewart Hendler
Starring: Briana Evigan, Leah Pipes, Rumer Willis, Jamie Chung, Margo Harshman, Carrie Fisher
Running Time: 101 minutes (plus trailers)
"Theta Pi must die"
When you bring together the on-screen female talent from films including Step Up 2: The Streets, Dragonball: Evolution and College Road Trip, what results can only be a good thing. Sorority Row is a remake of the 1983 slasher film The House on Sorority Row, and tells the story of a college prank that goes horribly wrong. With a dead body on their hands, five sisters of the Theta Pi sorority (who can each be defined by their single personality trait – the hero, the bitch, the slut, the nerd and the fifth one who happens to be Asian) decide that rather than go to the police, they should drop their sisters corpse down a mine shaft and never speak of it again. Following that, they each go their separate ways, enjoy successful careers, have families, and each live well past the age of seventy five.Ok, but seriously.
Eight months later, on the day of their graduation, each of the killers receives a disturbing text message that reveals that someone else knows about their secret. Apparently never having seen a horror film before in their lives (naturally), the group decides to go ahead with their massive going away party, and before you can say “plot inconsistency”, they’re being picked off one by one by a hooded killer who’s weapon of choice is a bladed lug wrench (which, if you have seen the film, isn’t quite as stupid as it sounds). Sorority Row is a movie that makes no attempts to do anything original or unique, but by following the tried and true slasher blueprint, it still manages to be entertaining for what it is.
My enjoyment of the film is definitely predicated on the fact that, since an inappropriately young age, I have been a huge fan of the slasher genre, and all the painfully one dimensional characters, idiotic twists, graphic violence and copious nudity that comes with it. As such, Sorority Row, which is by no means a good movie, provided me with plenty stuff to enjoy. There are a couple of interesting kills (my favourite coming very early in the film, involving a champagne bottle), some hot girls who take their clothes off (although given the films setting in a sorority house, not as much as I expected/would have liked) and…no, that’s actually about it. Nudity and violence. And if you expected anything else, then you probably haven’t watched enough of these kinds of movies.The direction, from one Stewart Hendler, is fine, although the footage is unnecessarily grainy at points. The dialogue is pretty poor (well, ok, it's worse than poor), but the screenwriters have at least done enough to keep the story and the characters vaguely interesting. As for the acting…to be honest, it wasn’t that bad. Like most of the rest of the film I’d be hard pressed to call it good, but all the actresses are competent enough to do what is required of them – Leah Pipes as the bitch is appropriately bitchy, Rumor Willis as the nerd is appropriately nerdy, and Jamie Chung (my crush from Dragonball) as the Asian is appropriately…Asian. Best of all, they are all appropriately attractive. And if that seems shallow, it’s because it is. Just like everything else in this film.
The other thing that enhanced my enjoyment of Sorority Row was that I was lucky enough to see it under near perfect conditions – it was me, two mates, and a completely empty theatre (I guess most other people have better things to do at noon on a Saturday). So we talked loudly through the dialogue, mocked the characters and got about ten minutes in before we started guessing who the killer was, what order the characters were going to die in, and how exactly they would each meet their demise (and with more than a decade of experience, I got almost everything right).I’d be lying if I said that this movie frightened me for even a second, but there were at least a couple of moments of mild tension during which I was invested in what was going on on screen. And to be honest, that’s all I or anyone else should expect. Sorority Row certainly isn’t worth paying money for if you’ve got a better option, but if the only alternative is homework (which for many of my readers I know it is) then I say get some friends together and go see this movie, which proves to be a fairly decent entrance into a genre that admittedly doesn’t have very high standards to begin with.
Sorority Row is in cinemas now
