"Sorority Row" DVD, Blu-ray Movie Review

2/25/2010 Posted by Admin

DVD, Blu-ray Movie Review

"Sorority Row"

Directed by Stewart Hendler, Written by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger, 101 Minutes, Rated R

By our guest blogger, Rob Stammitti


If you've seen pretty much any slasher film from the last, I don't know, 25 years or so (excepting some rare gems like "Scream" or flat-out oddities like "Jason X"), then you've seen "Sorority Row." The only difference is that you'l be watching a different set of actresses play out the exact same scenario you've seen time and again--some accident happens, someone dies, and then everyone involved covers it up and attempts to live with the secret, which ultimately leads to some wild scenario (be it a party, a slumber party, etc.) where all but one or two of the likable ones are killed by a mysterious masked fiend.

The accident in this case is the death of sorority sister Megan, who pretends to die of an overdose to prank her ex-boyfriend, who ends up killing her when he sees her move and is paranoid she'll wake up and have him arrested. Megan's friends and the prank's co-conspirators, Cassidy (Briana Evigan), Jessica (Leah Pipes), Ellie (Rumer Willis), Claire (Jamie Chung) and Chugs (Margo Harshman), fear they'll be blamed for Megan's death as well, so they toss her down a mine shaft and promise each other they'll never tell what happened.

Jump ahead eight months and the girls have graduated, and they're having one more big bash at the sorority house before they go their separate ways. Of course, a big, maze-like sorority house (that is coincidentally under construction for additions as well, so that there can be sections that are all creepy and that have flimsy floorboards) is a perfect setting for a slasher. So the party begins, and bodies start piling up.

You can imagine where it goes from there.

The film is, as many modern horror films are, a remake of a slasher film from the '80s called "The House on Sorority Row." It doesn't take too much from it outside the basic setting--"House" is more like "Friday the 13th"--but it wouldn't matter anyway because "Sorority Row" might as well be a remake of any '80s slasher film. The thing about '80s slashers, though, is that the campiness of the production values and acting allows them to have some "so-bad-it's-good" quality now, whereas "Sorority Row" is clean, shiny and brand new, so it's all the more bland when everything happens the way you expect it to.

The cast has about all the talent you'd expect from people chosen for eye candy. They're all assigned their stereotypes--the geek, the minority, the likable hero--and I suppose they convey those stereotypes well enough. The cast and the filmmakers almost seem as if they could have been involved in a slightly better slasher, though--the opening 20 minutes or so, despite having plenty of cringe-worthy dialogue, has a pretty strong level of suspense and urgency, but once the "story" really gets going it all goes to nothing.

If you're a big horror fan and just the thought of watching a bunch of folks get chopped up in uninventive ways for 90 or so minutes, I suppose "Sorority Row" is about as good as the next thing. Otherwise, there's nothing new to see here, and you're probably better off watching the original for a laugh.

Grade: D

View the movie trailer for "Sorority Row" below. What are your thoughts?


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