Sorority Row (2009)

Sorority Row (2009)

Directed by Stewart Hendler and written by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger. While Stewart has a few smaller directing gigs before this one Josh and Pete have both had a lot of experience, though in television. Sorority Row is another one of the horror remakes that hit the big screen in 2009. You would think with how much money is clearly being funneled into the horror genre with the slew of remakes being put on screen we could get something original for a change. This film is a modern day "re-imaging" of the 1983 classic slasher The House on Sorority Row. By re-imaging it is clearly a brand new film and not a real re-make of the classic. I will give it credit though for doing one very important thing – not caving to get a PG13 rating. While the gore is light the content is strong enough to deserve a R rating and I for one am of the opinion that all horror films should be rated the same way.

The film opens with a group of sisters from Theta Pi are having a party, though it is one with an agenda. One of the girl's has a boyfriend who recently cheated on her and they plan on having a little fun with having revenge against him. They come up with a prank that makes it looks like he kills her and when they go to dump the body (where they were going to reveal that it is a joke) he ends up stabbing her while trying to dismember the body - actually killing her. They make a pact to never speak of it again and everyone lives happily ever after.

Well that would make for a boring film so let's say happily ever after lasts until the end of the semester when someone starts calling everyone that was involved in the prank telling them they knew what had happened. At this point we follow a pretty standard modern slasher film that was unfortunately pretty predictable. The only real surprise was who ends up being the killer though aside from that wasn't trying for anything groundbreaking. Which in a way works as the classic sorority slashers were a fun watch but still I was hoping they had found a way to update the formula to bring us something new. Still, the ability to have the characters believably work together or fight among themselves depending on their personality fit together well.

While it wasn't a bad film it wasn't something that you are going to find a lot of replay value in. While it wasn’t the greatest horror film in the world it was a ‘remake’ (and again I use the term lightly) that at least was able to carry itself with a decent plot and acting that didn’t make you cringe to watch on screen as so many of the recent ones have suffered from. I do have to give the director bonus credits though for casting Carrie Fisher as a bad ass ‘house mother’ to the girls who always had an answer. At very least the writers were able to get some credit on the film as they are currently in the works of writing what will clearly be a masterpiece - Piranha 3-D.