Sorority Row
by Stewart Hendler
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Briana Evigan, Rumer WillisDirector: Stewart Hendler
Brand: SUM
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 101 minutes
Published: 2010-02-01
DVD Release Date: 2010-02-23
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Summit Entertainment
Movie Reviews of Sorority Row
Movie Review: A Single Serious Flaw Fails To derail This Sexy, Intense Horror Slasher
Summary: 5 Stars
A college prank goes horribly wrong and inadvertently leads to the death of a girl in Sorority Row, and the panicked would-be pranksters - along with a couple of other students who more or less got dragged into the scenario - decide after much frantic arguing, to cover up the death rather than go to the police. After nearly a year, with the dead girl classed as a missing person, it appears everybody's gotten away with it - until messages start coming in on the students's cell phones indicating that someone knows, and then someone starts coming after the students directly.
Everybody automatically said this was going to be a rip-off of I Know What You Did Last Summer, but while there are similarities, it's not a clone. Although they admittedly could have given the killer a different look than the hooded black graduation gown (which obviously looks like the Fisherman garb from I Know..), the first obvious difference is that I Know What You Did Last Summer was all about a car accident killing a pedestrian, and Sorority Row involves a rather edgy prank getting violently out of hand. The main differences, though, are in style. I actually liked I Know What You Did Last Summer when I finally saw it (I avoided it for a while, thinking it was going to be another Scream-type self-parody, which I'm not really into), but I Know was more...I don't want to say 'light' because that sounds like a putdown and I don't mean it as such...it was more of a mainstream, horror-tinged thriller, whereas Sorority Row is a much sharper, edgier, horror slasher - sometimes sexy, sometimes intense and bloody. A good point of comparison might be Valentine, or imagine a darker version of Cutting Class (Unrated Version).
After the break-up of a Theta Pi sorority sister named Megan (Audrina Patridge) and her boyfriend Garret (Matt O'Leary) after he cheated on her, she and several of her friends plan a prank to get back at him - she'll pretend to get back together with him at a party, they'll be making out upstairs and she'll have a fit from something she took (here's the one angle of the movie that rubbed me the wrong way, and I'll get to it in detail in a minute), and will apparantly die. Then the sorority sisters, including Garret's sister 'Chugs' (Margo Harshman) will stumble upon the scene and convince him that because it was an accident he's not to blame but nobody will believe him, therefore they better dispose of the body. Exactly how far they plan to go with this isn't clear - it appears to have not been thought out in depth. But to everyone's horror, it goes a lot farther than planned after a drive out into the country when Garret rams the sharp end of a tire iron through Megan's chest so the lungs will collapse and the body will sink easier in the lake.
Panic ensues. Ellie (Rumer Willis) and Cassidy (Briana Evigan), the two sorority sisters who weren't actually part of the planning or executing of this genius scheme, along with Claire (Jamie Chung) are in favor of going to the police and trying to explain. Jessica (Leah Pipes), unofficial 'queen bee' of the Thetas, leads the camp opposed to 'fessing up, champions the cause of going ahead of getting rid of the body, and manipulates/wheedles/bullies much of the rest of the group into going along with her. Only Cassidy is the hold-out, but Jessica circumvents this by slipping some evidence onto Megan's dead body. If Cassidy goes through with her threat to go to the police anyway, she'll be the only one connected to the corpse by evidence and the rest, Jessica insists, can just say they never had anything to do with it or even knew about it. That's the set-up, and while I realize it probably sounds like I've said too much, that only covers the first ten to twelve minutes. The rest of the movie unfolds with a pretty high number of twists, with several possible leads as to the identity of the black-clad killer but no blatantly obvious red herrings and no characters hanging around who you can predict will turn out to be the killer just because they have no other real role to play. It plays out less predictably than one might expect, and although the 'ominous messages' start in advance of the killings, the killings themselves all take place on one day and night, helping with the movie's fast-moving flow. It also helps because you don't have a situation where people are getting killed for a week straight but no one notices that the college population is getting pretty sparse.
All the aspects of Sorority Row have been handled with care. The acting is high-quality, the movie just looks great visually, the characterization is full and realistic on both the characters you like and the ones you can't stand. The killings are highly effective. The dialogue is inventive and believable, the movie has a high sexy edge, the girls are gorgeous, and there's real suspense. Carrie Fisher adds a lot to the movie as the Thetas's dorm headmistress Mrs. Crenshaw (they didn't turn her into the stereotypical 'token uptight authority figure', instead letting her be a fully developed character), and Caroline D'Amore is just terrific as Maggie, Megan's spunky and strange sister who's preparing to start at the same college next year.
Okay, now the bad. It's got to do with the initial prank, as I alluded to earlier. The masterplan of having Megan pretend to get back together with Garret and then die of an accidental overdose has this added little angle: Megan and Chugs cook up a plan where Chugs will give her brother Garret a placebo drug, but tell him it's a date rape drug, and encourage him to slip it to Megan to help speed their reconciliation along (that's what she 'overdoses' on). And he goes along with it. Ouch. Along with destroying any sympathy we might have for Garret after he sees his girlfriend apparantly die and then again after the incident with the tire iron, it takes the whole prank angle, already edgy but in a good way, and then moves it into sleaze territory. There are other places where Sorority Row goes over the top a bit, but in these instances it's going over the top in the right directions. The date rape drug angle, even though it's techincally a Fake date rape drug, should have been left out, in my opinion. Does it cripple the whole movie? No, not at all. But it is a chink in the armor.
The movie succeeds in recapturing its footing surprisingly quickly after this misstep and goes on to be a hot, vicious, winning horror movie. Definately one of 2009's most under-appreciated efforts. 9/10, could have been 10/10.
Summary of Sorority Row
It?s all fun and games until someone gets stabbed with a tire iron. When a pledge week prank goes terribly wrong and one of their own is killed, the popular, hard-partying sisters of Theta Pi vow never to speak of the tragedy again. But the past comes back to haunt them in the form of a homicidal maniac seeking revenge during the out-of-control graduation festivities.Similar DVD Movies
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