Sorority Row (2009)
Directed by Stewart Hendler
Remakes. Fuckin’ remakes. Why? Why did they have to remake The House on Sorority Row? Yeah it is an above average slasher from the golden age of the genre but why? Not every decent horror movie needs a remake. Hell some of the good ones don’t need remakes, Black Christmas anyone? Does all the charm from the 1983 original show through in the polished remake? Well, let’s see…
The plot is a little different from the original. Instead of the house mother being killed, one of the sorority “sisters” is accidentally murdered. Then some odd months later during graduation the remaining girls are being taken out one by one from a mysterious masked killer with the dumbest fucking slasher weapon in the history of film. Yes dumber than the big drill guitar from Slumber Party Massacre II. It is basically a tire iron with a different weapon on each of the 4 ends.
With remakes they tend to just find a bunch of hot girls that can’t act, and hey, they did the same there here. In fact Audrina Patridge is in this movie, yes the bitch from The Hills. She plays Megan, the girl that is accidentally murdered, thank god. We get a variety of other faces and boobs but nothing of substance, just hot chicks. Rumer Willis plays Ellie, one of the main characters, so you get to see her man jaw the whole film, the joy! Carrie Fisher is the house mother Mrs. Crenshaw, her role is kind of minimal but she does a halfway decent job with the awful dialogue written for this decrepit turd of a movie.
The special effects aren’t even anything to write home about, again that odd saying. The kills aren’t anything new, just a bunch of stabbings and such. The finale has the remaining girls struggling to battle the killer in the sorority house while it is burning. I honestly don’t know why it is on fire, I lost interest in this movie within the first 25 minutes but I tried dammit! I TRIED! God damn every character is just so putrid. There is no one to get behind in this movie. You hate everyone! That is the main issue with movies from this era. Everyone is such a miserable piece of shit that you don’t care if they die or not. That is the main knock with the Friday the 13th remake, aside from the one cute girl that fucking dies, you really can’t like anyone. If you were to ask me to make the most 2009 horror movie I could, I’d tell you no. Why would I say no? Well because it has already been made and they named it Sorority Row. This has so much in common with other bad remakes such as Black Xmas (ugh Xmas), Prom Night, and A Nightmare on Elm Street but at least this one changed it’s title enough to not get confused with the better original film.
After watching this, I wasn’t mad. No, why would I be mad? I have come to accept that all slasher movie remakes must suck, aside from My Bloody Valentine 3D and Friday the 13th (fight me). It really got me thinking. There are tons of good slasher movies, all of which have bad 2000s remakes. The only one that is left is the Prowler. How hasn’t that been remade? Thank god it hasn’t because it is a good movie. I suppose the Funhouse is another, but The Prowler I would say is better in quality. So far we have got Sorority Row, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Halloween II, My Bloody Valentine, Black Xmas, Prom Night, A Nightmare on Elm Street, April Fool’s Day, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which is actually quite good). They bled the golden age dry, I guess the next one in line will be Body Count, I mean that was slightly above average! I can’t give this anything higher than an F. It just plain sucks.
