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51%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #2,995
...out of 20,886 movies
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Cassidy, Jessica, Ellie, Claire and Megan are sorority sisters and true-blue friends to the end - until a prank gone wrong results in Megan's demise. Rather than risk their futures by reporting the crime, the friends agree to cover it up. Cassidy and company come to regret the decision a year later when someone begins sending them videos of the night Megan died, and they fall victim to a deadly stalker.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: March 19, 2010
There are some movies that simply should not be remade. Some movies are just classics in their own little way, and regardless of any problems that they may have had, they do not need to be updated or reimagined for modern audiences. The upcoming Nightmare on Elm Street remake is one of those movies: yes, the film is a bit dated in spots, and true, the effects could be done better with today's technology. Regardless, the film is a classic in the genre, and it's a crying shame that it is being remade.
The House on Sorority Row, on the other hand, is not one of those movies. The original film wasn't horrible by any means, but a classic? I wouldn't even go so far as to call it an above average film, much less something that stands head and shoulders over its contemporaries in the genre. So, it didn't strike a nerve with yours truly when the remake was announced, but due to the scathing reviews that came along with it, I sort of put off watching it (what can I say, Prom Night was still fresh in my mind). I did finally sit down with the movie though, and I found that it has very little in common with the original... but one thing that it did share was the overall level of quality.
As for the storyline, it centers around a group of sorority girls who decide to play a prank on a cheating ex, and said prank goes horribly wrong. Garrett (Matt O'Leary) is the ex, and as it turns out, he cheated on Megan (Audrina Patridge), one of the sisters in the most influential sorority on campus. The prank revolves around another sister giving him some roofies to slip into Megan's drink at a party, with the idea being that he can make things up with her before giving her a hearty helping of his manhood. Hey, I don't write these things, I only review them. Anyway, he apparently slipped her a few too many, she winds up vomiting all over the bed, and our lovable hero is panicking. Megan's fellow sisters quickly come to the rescue, and before you know it, the whole gang is speeding down the highway towards a hospital. Unfortunately, Megan dies en route, and the group decides to head out to an abandoned mineshaft to sort things out.
I should now point out that this was all part of the prank: the roofies were actually candy, the vomit was fake, and there was obviously no death to be had. Scaring the shit out of Garrett was the goal of the night, and as you can imagine, the plan is working to perfection. The sisters decide to take it one step further and propose that they need to dismember and dispose of the body so that their lives aren't ruined by a little accidental death, and I'm sure that you can see where this is going. While the girls have their backs turned and are laughing it up amongst themselves, Garrett takes it upon himself to jam a tire iron into Megan's chest to drain the air from her lungs so that her body won't float after it has been thrown into the river. Whoops. With a very real dead body on their hands now, the girls decide to toss it into the mineshaft and pretend that it never happened; after all, she was a sister, and she wouldn't want her friends in jail, would she?
Fast forward to eight months later, and the girls - Cassidy (Briana Evigan), Chugs (Margo Harshman), Ellie (Rumer Willis), Claire (Jamie Chung), and Jessica (Leah Pipes) - are planning one final party before graduating college. Unfortunately for them, somebody in a hooded robe has turned up and proceeds to pick them off one by one. The red herrings come fast and furious, the bodies pile up quickly, and we have ourselves a movie.
Anyone who has seen the original film can tell from that synopsis that the source and the remake have little in common, but for those who haven't seen the eighties version of the tale, let me go ahead and spell it out for you. Both films have sorority girls, both films center around a prank going wrong, both films fit into the slasher genre, and both films reference a sea pig. The similarities end there: the prank's target is someone else and for a new reason, the kills have been altered, the final reveal is radically different, and none of the characters carried over from the original release. In a remake of something like the aforementioned Nightmare on Elm Street, this would have been blasphemy, but here, I thought that it was fine. The original film wasn't exactly an example of ingenious storytelling, so rebuilding the plot from the ground up didn't hurt.
Now, with that out of the way, I'll readily admit that I enjoyed the film. I didn't love it and I'm glad that I rented it instead of buying the DVD, but I did enjoy it. This statement does come with an asterisk beside it, and the small print is this: I'll also readily admit that Sorority Row is not a great movie. It's a simple slasher flick that relies on the tried and true formula that was perfected during the eighties, but given that this is a remake of an eighties slasher flick, it felt appropriate. As you dear readers may know, I'm a huge sucker for a good eighties slasher, so this movie went over well in my household. If you're not a fan of jump scares, bad acting, an improbable twist ending, and a nice serving of kills and T&A, then you may disagree.
Speaking of "the goods", they come to us in varying qualities. Some of the kills are quite imaginative and memorable (a champagne bottle through the mouth and down the throat), while others are things that we've seen many times before (a knife through the throat). Some of them are quite gory, while others seem to have been trimmed for content with little in the way of the red stuff. It's a mixed bag to say the very least, but there's certainly enough here to keep the gorehounds happy.
Maybe I was just in a good mood today, but yes, I did enjoy Sorority Row, and yes, I will give it a thumbs up. Again, it's not a great movie and I'll admit that it really doesn't bring anything new to the table in the grand scheme of things, but as a slasher fan, I enjoyed the ninety minutes that it ran for. I certainly enjoyed it more than the original, which is something that doesn't happen often. Bonus points for Carrie Fisher as a badass shotgun-toting she-bitch. 7/10.
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#1:
Lucid Dreams
- added March 19, 2010 at 8:25pm
I like how you only have one picture of the
killer. Looking at the pictures and the trailer
for this movie make me hate it even more, I don't
know why, but it looking very bad. I'll just wait
for it to come on on Netflix.
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