bulimia, Bruce Willis in drag, and copious butt flappage - Sorority Row
Written: Sep 13 '09
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Product Rating:
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Pros: very little
Cons: unoriginal, uninspired, unfun, Rumer Willis
The Bottom Line: It is possible for a film to be predictable and cheesy, but still fun and entertaining, but Sorority Row, like most recent horror movies, hasn't learned that lesson..
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| brendan2's Full Review: Sorority Row |
Sorority Row is a remake in name only; actually, that's not even entirely accurate, as it borrows only the last two words of 1983's The House on Sorority Row. The basic idea is the same - sorority sisters accidentally kill someone and try to cover it up - but this updated version plays more like another I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Six vapid sorority girls decide to play a prank on one's cheating ex-boyfriend. They supply the ex, Garrett, with what he thinks are roofies, which he slips to Megan, who has a violent reaction and dies, or so Garrett thinks. The girls take the prank too far, and Megan winds up dead for real when Garrett decides to shove a tire iron into her chest. The group's b!tchy leader, Jessica, convinces the rest of them to dump Megan in a mine shaft and promise never to tell anyone what happened. Cassidy (Jennifer Love Hewitt... whoops, wrong movie! I mean, Briana Evigan) resists at first, but ends up following the crowd, and life goes on.
Eight months later, on graduation day, the girls start receiving ominous text messages. Someone knows what they did last summer, a hooded killer who will make them pay for their crime. The sisters decide that a wild post-graduation party is in order, even with the stalking-n-slashing going on; this allows for some displays of T&A, including disturbing shots of the back of a girl who's wearing footie pajamas with butt flap open. I'm sorry, but that's not attractive or arousing at all. Making matters worse, the camera cuts away to other stuff but keeps returning to linger on the butt flap.
Even without that disturbing imagery, there's little to like about Sorority Row. The plot has been done before, and there's not even a second of suspense, as none of the scenes incorporate tension or build-up. The identity of the killer is ridiculous, as is the fact that s/he murders people who had nothing to do with Megan. The number of random people killed is probably equal to or at least close to the number of sisters killed.
The tire iron seems like it would make a cool weapon, but the death scenes are immensely disappointing, with the camera cutting away quickly or showing one of the deaths in a shadowy silhouette. Discussing any of them almost warrants a spoiler warning, as the killings don't start happening until half-way through the movie. The more noteworthy scenes don't even involve the tire iron: a character, appropriately named Chugs, has a bottle of alcohol shoved deep down into her mouth; another dispatching involves a flare gun and a backed-up hot tub.
As expected, dialogue is fairly weak, though Leah Pipes gets some nasty one-liners as the catty Jessica. One of the girls comments that the vitamins (substituting for roofies) they gave Megan are helpful in preventing anemia; Jessica crows, "Too bad it doesn't prevent bulimia - that's something Megan could actually use!" Pipes is unlikable but believable as a cruel uber-b!tch. The rest of the cast is unremarkable but decent, save for Rumer Willis. Not only is she heinous to look at (her father Bruce would probably make a better-looking woman than she does), she also seems to think that whining loudly and incessantly constitutes acting. Even The Hills' Audrina Patridge contributes a better performance as Megan.
Sorority Row is unoriginal, uninspired, and unfun. It is possible for a film to be predictable and cheesy, but still fun and entertaining, delivering what the audience wants to see, but Sorority Row, like most recent horror movies, hasn't learned that lesson.
Recommended:
No
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brendan2
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