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Sisters from a sorority decide to play a prank on a boy that has cheated on one of their sisters. The prank involves the girl he's making out with to pretend to overdose and die. While they are deciding what to do with the "dead body", the boy freaks out and grabs a tire iron. He stabs the dead body, uh-oh. Now she is really dead. The girls freak out and dump the body down a well of some kind, or a mine shaft and decide to keep it a secret, so it doesn't ruin their lives. Months later they are hunted down and killed by someone who knows, or someone who is back from the dead.
Never seen the original, with remakes I always feel I need to state that I've seen the original or not. Whether that plays into my liking it, or the reader taking my review into consideration or not, is still up for grabs. Sorority Row is yet another horror remake that puts good looking young teenage girls in a series of brutal murders. The spin on this is that, well, there is no spin. This is a cookie cutter of a slasher film if I've ever seen one.
The problem with the film, and there are many, is that it doesn't try to be serious, or poke fun at the genre. It for some reason falls bizarrely in the middle. Thus, I wasn't really able to enjoy the funny bits, or the serious ones. The girls end up killing one of their best friends and after 5 minutes of some tears, they throw the body down that hole. Great friends? Only one seems to want to report this to the police, while another just keeps crying. We are instantly given our character archetypes. The bitch who is fake to everyone, the slut who sleeps with everyone, the smart one who is treated like a friend but really isn't, the conceded girl and finally the one we are suppose to connect with, our heroine. The girls stick to these archetypes throughout the film and never change a beat. Do I care about anyone? No. Am I suppose to? I think so? This isn't Freddy, Jason or Michael Myers, in which I'm rooting for the bad guy to kill every single person.
The kills themselves aren't anything special. In the words of one of the characters, the weapon is a "pimped out tire iron". Get it? The girl was killed with one, so the killer is killing them with one as well. The "pimped out" weapon has a harpoon hook at one end, a knife at another, then two handles I'm guessing. The killer throws this weapon everywhere. Great accuracy. With the exception of maybe one kill involving a bottle down a throat, everything else has been done before. Stabbing here, stabbing there, not even the one death with a flare gun was shocking or cool. This film severely lacks originality in the kill department.
The film never really gets you guessing as to who the killer is, not like Scream or any other "whodunnit" films. The reveal is eye rolling and ludicrous, along with the killer's motive. Why they decided to be crazy all of a sudden is beyond me, but if any slasher film knows, it's always the person who has the least amount of screen time. I was hoping this film would throw in a twist and have it be one of the main characters, silencing the others so she could live her life with the secret knowing it will be safe. But nope, they went the old generic route. Oh...mild spoilers I guess. Or not, I don't care. This film is pretty bad.
Sorority Row tries desperately to be a throwback to the 80's slasher films, but it fails horribly at it. It forgets what the goals were about 20 minutes in and the film tries to modernize itself with the inane dialogue. Do they have to mention facebook so many times in the beginning? 5 years from now will people still remember facebook? Who knows. But I know that 5 minutes from now I won't remember this movie.
*drops mic*
October 25th
Sorority Row
Directed By: Stewart Hendler
Sorority Row
Directed By: Stewart Hendler
Sisters from a sorority decide to play a prank on a boy that has cheated on one of their sisters. The prank involves the girl he's making out with to pretend to overdose and die. While they are deciding what to do with the "dead body", the boy freaks out and grabs a tire iron. He stabs the dead body, uh-oh. Now she is really dead. The girls freak out and dump the body down a well of some kind, or a mine shaft and decide to keep it a secret, so it doesn't ruin their lives. Months later they are hunted down and killed by someone who knows, or someone who is back from the dead.
Never seen the original, with remakes I always feel I need to state that I've seen the original or not. Whether that plays into my liking it, or the reader taking my review into consideration or not, is still up for grabs. Sorority Row is yet another horror remake that puts good looking young teenage girls in a series of brutal murders. The spin on this is that, well, there is no spin. This is a cookie cutter of a slasher film if I've ever seen one.
The problem with the film, and there are many, is that it doesn't try to be serious, or poke fun at the genre. It for some reason falls bizarrely in the middle. Thus, I wasn't really able to enjoy the funny bits, or the serious ones. The girls end up killing one of their best friends and after 5 minutes of some tears, they throw the body down that hole. Great friends? Only one seems to want to report this to the police, while another just keeps crying. We are instantly given our character archetypes. The bitch who is fake to everyone, the slut who sleeps with everyone, the smart one who is treated like a friend but really isn't, the conceded girl and finally the one we are suppose to connect with, our heroine. The girls stick to these archetypes throughout the film and never change a beat. Do I care about anyone? No. Am I suppose to? I think so? This isn't Freddy, Jason or Michael Myers, in which I'm rooting for the bad guy to kill every single person.
The kills themselves aren't anything special. In the words of one of the characters, the weapon is a "pimped out tire iron". Get it? The girl was killed with one, so the killer is killing them with one as well. The "pimped out" weapon has a harpoon hook at one end, a knife at another, then two handles I'm guessing. The killer throws this weapon everywhere. Great accuracy. With the exception of maybe one kill involving a bottle down a throat, everything else has been done before. Stabbing here, stabbing there, not even the one death with a flare gun was shocking or cool. This film severely lacks originality in the kill department.
The film never really gets you guessing as to who the killer is, not like Scream or any other "whodunnit" films. The reveal is eye rolling and ludicrous, along with the killer's motive. Why they decided to be crazy all of a sudden is beyond me, but if any slasher film knows, it's always the person who has the least amount of screen time. I was hoping this film would throw in a twist and have it be one of the main characters, silencing the others so she could live her life with the secret knowing it will be safe. But nope, they went the old generic route. Oh...mild spoilers I guess. Or not, I don't care. This film is pretty bad.
Sorority Row tries desperately to be a throwback to the 80's slasher films, but it fails horribly at it. It forgets what the goals were about 20 minutes in and the film tries to modernize itself with the inane dialogue. Do they have to mention facebook so many times in the beginning? 5 years from now will people still remember facebook? Who knows. But I know that 5 minutes from now I won't remember this movie.
*drops mic*