Sorority Row

Director: Stewart Hendler
Screenwriter: Josh Stolberg, Peter Goldfinger
Starring: Briana Evigan, Rumer Willis (interview), Leah Pipes, Jamie
Chung, Audrina Patridge, Julian Morris, Margo Harshman, Matt Lanter,
Carrie Fisher
Running time: 101 mins
Certificate: 15

With director Stewart Hendler branding this as Mean Girls-meets-Scream, it's clear that Sorority Row was never going to take itself too seriously. With the horror genre recently veering towards the psychological scares and gore of the Saw and Hostel series, this remake of the 1983 cult classic The House On Sorority Row marks a welcome return to the good old slasher days of the 1990s, boasting that tried and trusted plot of beautiful people hiding a deep dark secret and getting hunted down by a mysterious killer.

The movie opens as the exclusive Theta Pi sorority throws its annual freshman pledge night, a heady evening of sex, drugs, alcohol and impossibly attractive people. Away from the action, Queen Bee Jessica (Pipes) and her posse have masterminded a cruel prank against Megan's (Patridge) cheating boyfriend. Leading the gullible (and let's face it, equally bad) Garret (Matt O'Leary) to slip Megan a "date rape drug", the wronged woman pretends to die, leading the sorority sisters to accuse Garret of killing her. They convince him to help them dump her body at an abandoned mine (conveniently located nearby), but before the prank can be revealed, a shock twist leaves Megan dead for real. Terrified about their future and goaded by Jessica, the girls decide to dump Megan's body in the mine and get on with their lives. But, as in all good horror yarns, the past can't stay hidden forever, and seven months later the sisters realise that somebody else knows what happened that night.

While proceedings start in a predictable enough manner - beautiful people clad in lingerie unaware of a killer in their midst; protagonists making ridiculous decisions etc. - Sorority Row manages to remain both fresh and watchable despite a handful of rather obvious plot turns. Unlike many of its predecessors, a lull in deaths after the initial killing allows time for the main characters to develop, meaning that you genuinely care (or don't) about their fate. The five leads knowingly embrace the true stereotypes of a college movie - beautiful bitch (Jessica), faithful follower (Claire), quiet intellectual (Ellie), party girl (Chugs) and the morally right one (Cassidy) - but here it works, as each girl displays her own vulnerabilities and the polar opposites of Cassidy (Evigan) and Jessica provide ample opportunity for heated clashes. The mainly female cast also provides a welcome change from the 'damsel in distress' mould commonly favoured by the genre, and here it is the men who are painted as drunken idiots or sensitive sidekicks.

However, the biggest surprise is how genuinely and intentionally funny the dialogue can be. Jessica delivers a string of laugh-out-loud lines, deigned to mock the horror genre, which only serve to make her inherently dislikeable and morally dead character even more appealing. The star of the show, Pipes's bitchy and image-obsessed Jessica, desperate to win the approval of her boyfriend's (Lanter) Senator father, manages to be both horrendously devilish and inexplicably watchable, while Evigan exudes a welcome strength and charisma that make her an ideal role model for horror-loving females. Kudos must also go to Carrie Fisher, who makes a brief cameo as the gun-toting, badass sorority mother who will do anything to protect her girls.

Obviously this will draw parallels with I Know What You Did Last Summer and the soon-to-be revisited Scream franchise, but Sorority Row manages to hold its own. Glossy, gorgeous to look at and filled with 'jump'-in-your-seat moments, this has all the hallmarks of a popcorn horror movie, complete with the ubiquitous shower scene, creepy abandoned cellars and characters' humourous nods to their own stupidity. It never verges on too gory or bloody, with the comedy acting to diffuse any huge sense of tension or fear. The moral message is clearly there, but it's never hammered home, and character flaws are not really related to their deaths. In the end, a safe and silly plot, inventive killings, a vaguely terrifying villain and a wealth of girl power makes this a sleazy and fun way to spend a Saturday night.


> What do you think of the movie? Share your views