“Theta Pi must die!” …and other screenwriting gems – ‘Sorority Row’ Review…

Posted on September 17, 2009 - 10:22pm by michael [caption id="attachment_55994" align="alignright" width="268" caption="Given this poster, there's a conspicuous lack of girl-on-girl action in the movie..."][/caption] So it was because of my long-standing pact never to pass up a movie with the word “sorority” in the title that Sorority Row narrowly beat out the enticing new spoof Cleavagefield in my tough decision last night to choose some quality entertainment for myself on a quiet Thursday evening. I can’t use the excuse of not having known that it would be little more than another teen slasher passing through the gauntlet of inevitable critical bludgeoning on its way to theaters packed with pimply teenagers and reclusive horror movie buffs, so I may as well admit that I watched it out of a simple desire for some 80’s style slashing and tons of gratuitous nudity. I was once, of course, a pimply teenager and am now a reclusive horror buff, but unfortunately I’m also old enough to remember I Know What You Did Last Summer, and the ensuing confusion about why such a brainless horror movie would become so popular, much less so exactly copied all these years later. And with that, by the way, my comparisons to that movie will stop, because they are too many and too obvious to necessitate any further discussion, save to mention that there is now a new generation of movie-going teenagers out there bankrolling bad horror movies, and so here we are. So, as you know, a prank gone wrong results in the accidental death of one of the sorority sisters. The rest of these charming young women, and the boy-genius who did the accidental killing, all band together and agree never to speak of the incident again. [caption id="attachment_55996" align="alignleft" width="361" caption="Margo Harshman reacts to the news that she will be playing a character named Chugs."][/caption] They drop their good friend’s lifeless body down a well and go back to their lives, hoping that their brilliant futures can now emerge undamaged by their dastardly deed, only to be stalked a year or so later by a hooded figure who is dressed in a graduation gown which could just as easily, or easier, be a rain slicker. Then they get killed off one by one, etc etc etc. The movie’s excuse for being made at all is that this time, instead of drunken college kids, we have drunken sorority girls who rely on their unbreakable bond of sorority sisterhood to provide a reason for them to stick together and cover up their crime, as well as a healthy dose of irony in the fact that it’s also one of their sworn sisters being tossed into the bottom of a well like a dead animal. I'm glad that at least the movie doesn't make any futile effort to give us even a single character on a lofty moral high-ground. [caption id="attachment_55997" align="alignright" width="408" caption="Chick with axe, chick in underwear, etc."][/caption] There is also a distractingly feeble attempt to set everyone up as suspects throughout the film, but make no mistake, this is no Sherlock Holmes mystery. Everyone has their reasons for wanting to keep the murder covered up (or for silencing those that want to come clean), but for all the possibilities, don’t be surprised by a distinct feeling of despondence when the killer is revealed. In fact, one of the surest signposts of the sheer weakness of the script is that, in order to make up for having a relentlessly uninteresting killer is to throw in a stupid speech at the end which is just as overlong as it is pointless. The movie starts out with a lot of college kids categorically breaking every single rule in the horror movie rulebook, running around drunk and half naked at a gigantic kegger, partying and grab-assing and doing various drugs and hooking up with each other. [caption id="attachment_55998" align="alignleft" width="381" caption="Truth. Respect. Honor. Secrecy. Murder. Cleavage. And um...wait, what was the first one again?"][/caption] A drug-related incident early in the film comes close to being an interesting death scene, only to have it turn out to be the goofy beginning of the fateful prank. But my favorite part is when Jessica solicits the iron-clad sorority motto in preventing any of them from telling the truth. “Trust. Respect. Honor. Secrecy. Soldarity.” Sounds more like a tailor-made motto for a bad sorority horror movie than a real sorority, but at least no time is wasted in trying to explain where all those lofty tenets disappeared to when they disposed of their sister’s body. Acting or screenwriting, and possibly even both, would have been necessary in order to attempt such a thing. If nothing else, the movie features a curious performance from Carrie Fisher as the girls’ sorority mother, the only one I’ve ever heard of that keeps a shotgun handy. And the gun, by the way, is the film’s throwback to the orginal House on Sorority Row, which was about a group of sorority girls that accidentally kill their house mother and then try to cover it up. [caption id="attachment_55999" align="alignright" width="418" caption="Unfortunately, I don't know if Jamie Chung goes topless in the movie. Right about at this point I fell out of my chair and didn't regain consciousness until some minutes later..."][/caption] Novice screenwriters Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger wouldn’t dare kill the likes of Carrie Fisher, shotgun or not. Also keep your eye out for Rumer Willis, who gives one of the film’s only quietly respectable performances, and the staggeringly beautiful Jamie Chung, whose sheer hotness made her the only distinguishable character in the movie for me. Ultimately the movie is about nothing more complicated than bitchy sorority girls getting offed in mean ways, which explains the totally intolerable characters and the fact that they all die by having some object thrust into their mouths and through the back of their necks, or through the back of their necks and out their mouths. The creators behind this thing have some real issues that need to be dealt with. Director Stewart Hendler never once shows any interest in providing a scrap of a unique horror experience, or even to freshen up the horror clichés that he indifferently slaps into the proceedings, and the expected result is a bonehead horror movie that will generate not a scare but a nervous laugh when it ends with the promise of a sequel. Let’s hope not! The Bean Meter [caption id="attachment_56000" align="aligncenter" width="110" caption="1.5 Beans out of 5."][/caption] [caption id="attachment_56004" align="aligncenter" width="445" caption=""Really? Chugs??!? You can't be serious!""][/caption]