Cast: Briana Evigan, Leah Pipes, Rumer Willis, Jamie Chung, Margo Harshman, Audrina Patridge, Caroline D’Amore, Carrie Fisher; Director: Stewart Hendler; Producers: Darrin Holender, Mike Karz; Screenwriters: Josh Stolberg, Pete Goldfinger; Music: Lucian Piane; Editor: Elliot Greenberg; Genre: Horror/ Thriller; Cinematography: Ken Seng; Distributor: Summit Enter; Location: USA; Running Time: 100 min.;
Technical Assessment: 2
Moral Assessment: 2
CINEMA Rating: For mature viewers 18 and above
Theta Pi is a sorority house run by Mrs. Crenshaw (Carrie Fisher) where the girls led by Jessica (Leah Pipes) often hold wild parties. When Megan (Audrina Patridge) discovers her boyfriend Garret (Matt O”leary) cheating on her, she decides break off and exact revenge with the help of her sisters. So during their sorority’s Pledge Week, Megan connives with her sisters to pull a prank on Garret. They convince him to drug Megan so he can freely bed her and later on Megan would pretend die from overdose. Unfortunately, Garret believes he has really killed Megan and proceeds to impale her with a tire iron. The shocked and panicked sisters are convinced by Jessica to pretend Megan went missing at the party and lead the girls to dump the body and swear them to secrecy. Eight months later during their graduation party, the sisters receive text messages from Megan’s cell phone. Soon after, a hooded tire-iron-wielding slasher in graduation gown brutally kills all those involved in the cover up one after the other.
As in any slasher film, Sorority Row, a bad remake of House on Sorority Row, features semi-clad big-chested girls engaged in wild parties and bad company running stupidly from an amazingly clever killer who can single handedly slaughter dozens of people one after the other. There are bright moments when the film tries to break of from its formula, particularly the witty one-liners and sense of humor, making the viewers sympathize with the characters and actually care for their safety. Other than this, the movie is nothing more than a bloody body count and how many creative scenes the director can use for each murder. The plot development and the revelation of the killer is disappointingly brainless, the performances are shallow and the creative direction is mediocre.
Ironically, SORORITY ROW’s Theta Pi emphasizes trust, respect, honor, secrecy and solidarity as its core values. Values which in reality are merely lip service to protect themselves. The characters do not even care to look after a friend - so much so for sisterhood. At the end, secrecy is the only value that counts to cover up for a crime. The characters are ill-mannered, promiscuous and rude.
The movie contains gratuitous nudity, gore and violence, rough and vulgar language and absolutely no redeeming quality to be worth anyone’s time and money.
