Sorority Row – Review

For all of the attention and publicity the vampire genre has gotten with its resurgence in television and cinema, I’d like to point out that the slasher genre has been in a boom too, ranging from remakes to original takes, but I guess the guys in the masks get no respect. Sorority Row is essentially a slasher product coming off the assembly line, featuring all of the bells and whistles we’ve come to expect from a film like this. For all of the things the Stewart Hendler film could have added, like 3-D, it plays it conservative and just stays the course, as any slasher before it had done.

While that isn’t exactly high praise, this remake of the relatively forgotten 1983 film, hits most of the conventions correctly, and you can’t help but be slightly pleased at the results. A slasher movie is as simple as say a zombie movie, one of the main reasons we get them as consistently, and sometimes as blandly as we do. Screenwriters Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger, like I said, hit all of the conventions properly, with the stock characters-the bitch, the final girl, then the blood and outrageous deaths, and finally, the red herrings to sway us away from the killer’s identity. You’ve seen this all before, but the film is so gung-ho about the proceedings, the familiarity that the film plays in, doesn’t seem as derivative as it should have been. I mean, this film plays out like a cover to a great song, even though you’ve heard better covers. Isn’t that what slashers really are? Just covers to the original archetype? Sorority Row doesn’t do anything new or different than say Black Christmas from 1976 or even a Friday the 13^th sequel from the 1980s, but it does what it needs to do well, or well enough to be a passable, and at times, pleasing for 90 minutes.

Again, despite the simple set up of a prank going horribly wrong, and a decision to cover it all up to protect their future careers and lives, with a killer out for them as their secret isn’t so secret, the screenwriters infused the film with some good dialogue and a couple of decent characters. Briana Evigan is smoking hot, and while she isn’t hitting the dance floor with apple-bottom jeans and the boots with the fur, she’s perfectly likable, making the character of Cassidy someone worth spending time with, and rooting for. Leah Pipes as the bitch is a perfect foil to everyone. Pipes handles the dialogue with some flair, a feat that makes her instantly likable yet you instantly hate her. The other characters are slasher movie stock stereotypes, but we don’t mind because of Pipes and Evigan.

The hooded killer isn’t as terrifying as a Jason Voorhees, sadly, as it’s the film’s real letdown. The film is more concerned with the group of girls, their drama, and the secret, so the killer takes a back seat. While that is fine, as it helps out making everything a bit atypical within its typical story structure, the killer isn’t a force worth being scared about. I would fear having their secret than this hooded figure after me. But at least when the hoodie kills, it’s bloody. The film isn’t shy to show off some gore and the occasional female nudity, and as we all know, this is another staple of the genre we either love or hate, and if you’re a slasher geek, it should get a thumbs up just for not being a PG-13 wuss.

Sorority Row is what you’d expect a slasher film to be. So while that’s not a thing to separate itself from the other slashers we’ve been offered this year, it still pleases when it needs to. Blood, boobs, and some Briana Evigan, goes a long way to do what its goal was: get in, kill, and get out. I doubt if many slasher fans, and that’s the key to liking this film is being a slasher fan, will throw much fuss. Like a great song being covered once again by a new artist, Sorority Row still works for what made that original great song sound so good in the first place. All I know, now in hindsight, is that I went to the wrong college. This one had a gun-toting, foulmouthed Princess Leia, some uber-hotties, and a hooded killer. What did mine have? Some boring kids and teachers that cared about an education. Yeah, I went to the wrong school. Seriously.

Rating: