wcbe: : Sorority Row (2009-09-09)

"It's a body. Do we wrap it in the blanket as it is, or do we chop it into little pieces first?" Chugs (Margo Harshman)

Sorority Row has girl-women in micro shorts with heels long enough to pierce armor, guys not quite as smart as their abs, and a hooded serial killer deft with a tire iron. A remake of the 1983 cult fav, The House on Sorority Row, it is nothing if not derivative of every schlocky, sexy, bloody, and ultimately silly horror film that can't decide if it should be funny or scary because having both is a difficult trick rarely achieved except by Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Sorority sisters cover up the bloody result of a prank by burying the body of a house-sister and spending the rest of the movie eluding a stalker who may have witnessed the crime. Although Rumer Willis (yes, daughter of), who plays nervous Ellie, tries in an interview to elevate the film to a study of the consequences of sin, there's no way this is anything but a weak slasher movie that uses every horror trope to almost no effect (we've always known an unaccompanied trip to the basement is not a good idea nor a shower with no one else in the other stalls, etc.).

Quite good is Leah Pipes as Jessica, the leader of the pack: She has the right mix of indifference and nerve to invoke laughs and admiration as a new feminist who is bold, beautiful, and ambitious. Well, Nicholson she's not, but welcome to this tired plot she is.

Sorority Row has going for it my disbelief that films like this are made at all. But they are, and it may take another 25 years for it to become a cult classic.

Right now, we've seen it all already, and it's not pretty.