Sorority Row

Sony

R4 DVD

This is a creative and even at times camp slasher taking inspiration from Mark Rosman’s The House on Sorority Row. It also nods to a range of horror classics from I know What You Did Last Summer to Scream.

Theta Pi is a sorority from hell, the girls are obnoxious, manipulative and dangerous. A group of them decide to play a practical joke on one of their cheating boyfriends (who is also one of their brothers). They give him some drugs and suggest he makes out with his ex-girlfriend Megan as a way of saying sorry. They have a live feed in his room linked to youtube. As things get hot and sweating, she starts to foam at the mouth and she passes out. They all play along driving to a hospital but claim she has died along the way. They travel to an abandoned spot where they claim they need to depose of the body. Of course this is all a bad joke, but things go horribly wrong. When they debate how to get the air out of her chest to bury her, the panicked youngster Justin rams a car jack into her chest. Now she is really dead and they are all murderers.

The remaining sorority sisters, the dominant Jessica (Leah Pipes), sex and pills Chugs (Margo Harshman), Asian sexpot Claire (Jamie Chung) and nerdy Ellie (Rumer Willis) decide to hide the body and keep it a secret. There is lots of protesting and debate but the body is finally thrown down a mineshaft and Megan is reported as missing.

Four years later and they have just graduated. A text arrives on all on their phones showing the murder weapon. They realize they are all in trouble but who is after them. Justin has become mentally unstable; is he the source of the problem? What about Megan’s sister who has just pledged the sorority? Or could Megan be back from the dead.

Sorority Row is an excellent mixture of guts, gore and humour. It is a true homage to Eighties slasher films and filled with sex, nudity and teen misbehaviour. The kills are high in number but do not follow the modern trend into torture porn but have an element of humour. Even the murder weapon is a pimped out car jack with all sorts of accessories.

The characters are all unlikable and the dialogue suitably bitchy, even the secondary characters have great dialogue. One of the stand-out figures is Carrie Fisher as the sorority mum, she is one tough mamma.

There are lots of diversions in the plot so it really is hard to guess who the killer is until the very end.

Sadly Sorority Row didn’t get especially good press which I think is a shame. It seems today horror must be either super violent torture porn or straight comedy and a quirky mix such as this one is not really appreciated for what it is. Anyone who enjoyed Eighties slasher films should enjoy Sorority Row.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No.2 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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