Review of Sorority Row (2009) by Arturo M — 16 Jan 2011

What starts out as a promising college slasher romp quickly unravels into a nonsensical passe horror cliche. If the pop-horror post-Scream genre of thriller film is on the verge of demise, Sorority Row isn't helping to keep it alive.

Scantily-clad college babes, occasional gratuitous breast scenes, excessive college drinking, some unique and overly gory death scenes with an enhanced tire iron, and a scene of Carrie Fisher firing off a double-barrel shotgun. I've just summarized the film without divulging anything about the plot. Let's get to that.

A college prank goes terribly awry. Some Sorority sisters accidentally murder one of their own. Then they decide to cover it up and pretend that it never happened. Which leads us to graduation day eight months later. Someone has discovered the murder, they start harassing them via text and picture messages OMG LOL, and then they start killing them off one by one.

Sure, this movie has been done before. It was so new when Scream came out, that it was easy to embrace more of its kind: I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, even the Halloween franchise turned itself to this '90's-era style of horror. While these types of films were once a dime a dozen, they are made far more sparingly these days. Sorority Row is an example of why this type of chiller is going extinct.

The premise is fine: best friends accidentally cause one to get murdered and then they keep it secret. Then someone wants to kill them for it. This is all fine. Where it goes out of kilter is when there seems to be a real stretch on who the killer is and what their motive is. Then when it turns out to be something unusual, it is almost torturous for the audience to have to try to believe exactly why this logic should be swallowed. Sadly, the film could have been much better if it had a better ending.

Sure, the acting is pretty awful. The one-liners are pretty bad, too. The vulnerabilities of the characters is quite silly. But these elements can't be held against Sorority Row. That's all a part of the genre. For the horror purist, this film is semi-acceptable. The death scenes are gruesome; that cannot be denied. There is little suspense, but that doesn't change the fact that you know that people are going to die... and it will be brutal. The film has its share of innocent victims, gore, and shower scenes. If that's the slasher you're looking for, you've got it here.

To sum it up, Sorority Row is a pretty bad film. It starts with promise and ends completely fallen apart from any sense it may have upheld at first. I can think of worse ways to fill 90 minutes, but don't look to this one if you want to conjure up any scares or a story that makes sense.