Customer Reviews

Sorority Row

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Yeah, I watched it! So what?! When you know what you're going in for, this kind of movie has many merits. Sorority Row is a movie about a killer who meanders through an alcohol-soaked, drug-fueled, sex-crazed, sorority McMansion during the end of the year party indiscriminately butchering the tight-bodied, scantily-clothed co-eds - and their dufus boyfriends - who may or may not have knowledge of a murder cover-up involving a senior soror who got chucked down a well like baby Jessica.

Additionally, the cheese-covered horror rules are followed perfectly: The phones get no reception unless receiving a horrifying, tension-increasing picture or video from the killer. A dark, mysterious figure in a face-covering graduation robe, the killer is so derivative that I imagined the character holding the fishing hook from I Know What You Did Last Summer (IKWYDLS) and wearing the mask from the Scream Trilogy, neither of which happened. There is full frontal nudity that serves no other purpose than checking off the nudity requirement. Characters who engage in illicit sex almost certainly die. Characters who elicit groans or disapproval from the audience are guaranteed excruciating deaths. And, finally, there is inevitably more than one "twist" to mislead the viewers attempting early killer recognition.

As for the characters, just picture IKWYDLS and replace the male characters with gorgeous, nubile, women in their early twenties. It's the "talented" Megan (Audrina Partridge); smokin' hot Cassidy (Briana Evigan), the girl with the moral compass; Chugs (Margo Harshman), the sorority's resident slut (who is present in all real life sororities); the sexy Claire (Jamie Chung), fulfills multicultural standards for the sorority's funding purposes; the blonde vixen Jessica (Leah Pipes), who is as ruthless as she is beautiful; and Ellie (Rumer Willis), the slack-jawed, kind of ugly girl (but with a nice body) all sororities need for term papers and to increase cumulative GPA. Aside from the main cast, there is an endless supply of hotties prancing around in lingerie (or less) and either dancing about in the soapy bubbles from an overflowing hot tub or having a feather pillow fight in pajamas with exposed behinds. Read that last sentence again.

As for the plot, a sorority prank goes wrong, one of the sisters dies and the rest of the movie is about the characters covering up the murder, repenting their actions, or playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a tire-iron wielding killer who appears to have an oral fixation. Pretty standard, suspenseful stuff.

Aside from my belief that Ellie should have been the victim of the prank, thereby improving the possible skin-to-film ratio, the directing, acting, special effects, and all other aspects representative of any number of recent Hollywood horror flicks are sufficient. No awards will be won, but I'd probably watch it again for hot chicks and bad jokes.

I seen this movie yes to tell the truth the plot was interesting sort of like "jawbreaker" meets the sority house, that being said lets get in the movie a horrible prank gone wrong a girl get's killed by a tire iron. Never seen that comming! The killing in the movie were mostly inventive and original. The use of a tire irpn being ussed as a murder weapon is not original but how the tire iron was mad how ever was very inventive. At one time I thought I had the plot figured out and I didn't I just want to point out one other thing when the killer is known can you say "Ritalin" I mean the killer is jumpy like he had way to much caffine sort of like "ya man all these people are wasted and I need another fix man" I thought the killer althoe original could have been portrayed a lot better as lets face it he is no "Billy Loomis" (scream) or "Michael Myers" (obviously Holloween" all in all not a bad movie but could be better.

Sorority Row [Theatrical Release]

[...]

Mark Rosman's THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW was a very decent 1983 slasher movie : gruesome in the right places, with a strong final girl, efficient suspense scenes and a pleasingly surrealistic finale. It's not a classic, nor (until later this year) has it ever had a proper DVD release, but it is an 80's horror movie, so it obviously needs to be remade so that we contemporary audiences don't need to watch anything made before 1998.
The new movie with a shortened title has token references to the older movie : it unfolds at "Rosman College", briefly features the bird-like cane that was a memorable murder weapon in the 1983 film, and has a scene of corpse-dumping. Otherwise, the moments that feel familiar in SORORITY ROW could have come from any number of 80's slasher films, and the elaborately nasty prank that triggers the plot is more reminiscent of the exposition in movies like SLAUGHTER HIGH. It's barely a "remake", and the opening titles confuse matters more by stating "based on the screenplay SEVEN SISTERS" - that being an early title for HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW.
Curiously, the new film's core story and structure are very close to I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, and it has an almost identical group discussion scene before the body - dumping that sets off the slasher plot. It doesn't't directly reference other slasher movies, but its smartass attitude, in which characters in peril crack self-aware or callous one-liners, is very much in tune with the SCREAM slasher era of the late 90's. It feels like a film out of time - though, luckily, it has more to offer than most.
The set up is as simple as you'd want. A bunch of really bitchy co-eds (all of them hot in some way, with one who pretends to be dowdy but we know the truth) unwittingly wind up with a dead sorority sister. This is the result of a prank that drives the prank victim to kill a girl, while, afterward, her friends decide that for the sake of their future, it's best to throw the body down a mineshaft and never speak of this event again. Eight months later, it's Graduation and, because this is 2009 not 1997, those involved receive mysterious, threatening text messages rather than notes saying "I know what you did...". A killer in a graduation gown wielding a pimped up tire iron, does them in one by one.
Many of the clichés you know and love are present and correct in SORORITY ROW : mobile phones with no signal when you need it ; fake scares involving the medicine cabinet mirror ; a double twist finale with back-from-the-dead shenanigans. It's far from perfect : the killer, when he's finally unveiled, is fatally bland, and the climax involves a raging house fire that conveniently pauses itself to allow the protagonists to fight to the death with said killer without burning up.
That said, it's often stylish, with a neat, visually striking malfunctioning-Jacuzzi death and an extended opening tracking shot through the sorority house (with clever hidden cuts) that bids to be the slasher movie equivalent of memorable moments in GOODFELLAS and BOOGIE NIGHTS. It's sharply written and acted, with a nice ear for the sheer bitchiness and scathing wit of teenage girls : the dialogue skews closer to HEATHERS than to regular slasher flicks, and the banter and intentional laughs are a lot of fun throughout. Carrie Fisher gets a scene-stealing bit as the gun-toting badass house mother (a totally different character to the crabby bitch in the 83 film) who says rousing things like "He, she or it is about to get two rounds to the face".
Unlike a lot of the post-SCREAM slashers, this slick, well directed, fast-paced movie ensures that the exploitation movie expectations of the typical audience are fulfilled. This means a bunch of pleasingly bloody kills (stand-outs involve booze bottles and flare guns), and gratuitous boob shots that make you feel like 1983 never went away. It misses out on the genuine creepiness of Mark Rosman's under-valued movie, but this is still worth a look.

What you see is what you get. This is a GREAT slasher, and CORRECTLY serves as a throwback to the 80s and 90s slashers we all loved so much. The kills are really creative and cool, the dialogue is funny and delightfuly cheesy. Means Girls + I Know What You Did Last Summer = Sorority Row...SLASHER GOLD!!

Possible Spoilers

If you took "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and "Urban Legends", put both films in college and made the students even stupider than the cast of the first "Summer" movie then you would have "Sorority Row". This sounds like a major slam against the film, but while not great it is fun to watch and most of the women in cast are quite good looking, which makes it easier on the eyes for those who enjoy that kind of thing.

It starts out with a few sorority sisters playing a prank on a guy who cheated on one of them, so one of these sisters pretends to be drugged and then she "dies". The sisters burst in and try to come up with ways to get rid of the body and decide to dump it down an old mine shaft. The guy however ends up actually killing her (Audrina Partridge, "The Hills") and of course the remaining sisters make a pact never to tell a soul what happened.

Now a year later these sisters are looking towards graduation, but things start to get weird, the girls all start getting pics and text messages from someone who was at the scene of the crime and unless you've never seen one of these films its very predictable from here on out. Someone is killing the girls who were there on that night and despite all the red herrings its obvious who it is. The death scenes are somewhat creative and the gore is good if not spotty.

The cast is average for a horror film, though again most of the girls look great, especially Briana Evigan ("Step Up) and Jamie Chung ("Sucker Punch"). Nice cameo by Carrie Fischer ("Star Wars") as the head master of the sorority. The best part of the film is the opening sequence and a couple of the scenes afterwards, then its typical horror stuff.

I personally enjoyed the movie, its not great, but its fun and goes by at a quick pace. **1/2 out of 4 stars.

Sorority Row is actually a fun, teen horror-y movie. I really liked this one, it was cheesy but fun. The acting isn't great -- it could of had better acting but I still enjoyed it! I couldn't help but get this one on Blu-Ray. The picture is really good too. The movie is very similar to I Know What You Did Last Summer, but hey, all [teen] horror/thrillers movies are like that now days! Like:
The Roommate (2011) >>> Single White Female
Obsessed (2009) >>> Fatal Attraction

In the end, it's a fun movie and it has some good scares!

First off, I admit to being a fan of the original. The original has become a cult classic. I was surprised to see that it is only a remake of the original "House on Sorority Row" in its simplicities. I was so glad they did not copy the same narrative as the first. Both the original and remake are about a group of sorority sisters covering up a secret only to be punished for it later. Other than that the movies are different. This remake is sassy, funny, over-the-top scary. How would I describe this remake to young horror fans who have never seen the original? Well, it is a little bit "Mean Girls" mixed with "I know what you did last summer."

Another film with hot young girls getting slashed. It has a simple plot. A prank goes wrong and someone dies. The girls keep it a secret and then get knocked off one by one by some revengeful person. The deaths are interesting and involve a tire iron. I watched it twice and i can easily watch it again.

The original "House on Sorority Row" was not a great or classic film in any way. It didn't really stand out from most of the other slasher films of the 80's and was somewhat forgettable. This remake didn't really have that much to live up to. This 2009 remake actually comes across as inferior to an already average at best film. In the original the sorority girls accidentally kill their house mother who they hated in a prank gone wrong and this is what sets up the later bloodbath that is to come. In this one they use the prank gone wrong idea again but this time a girl pretends to have OD'ed and freak the guy out who gave it to her. The guy thinking she's dead starts to chop her up so he can burry her only to find out that she was still alive.
To me this just seemed like a ripoff of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and other modern teen slasher films from the late 90's onward. The film then goes on to a typical murder mystery as to who is the killer as they are one by one picked off. Sorority Row basically just copies most of the cliches of slasher films such as making sure the minority doesn't make it through the film(usually a Black character but this time an Asian). Other than the death at the beginning there aren't any really standout kills in the movie. Some good things this film has to offer is for one most of the girls in here are at least kind of hot and a second is that I changed my guess maybe twice over who the killer will be.
This film is watchable as a cheap rental or if it's playing on TV but nothing worth going out of your way for. Overall it's a forgettable and cliche'd slasher film that fails to stand out with the current crop of slasher films or with the 80's ones either. Sorority Row fails to live up to the already low standards from the original 80's slasher film.

Sassy, bitchy, scary and good-looking--Sorority Row more than pleased me since I wasn't expecting much. And when I read that this was yet another remake of an older fright flick, I was ready to destroy it.

Surprisingly, it proved to be lots of fun and the string of murders were amazing. What I liked in particular, besides the really excellent performance of the whole cast, was the terrific musical score b Ken Seng. The pounding music worked perfectly the hidden violence that explodes when you don't exp3ect it.

Director Stewart Hendler moved things along smoothly and never let things lag. As an old timer, I just wonder if college is as wild as depicted in the movie since my glory day back in the early 60s were still in the Pat Boone and Doris Day style of living.