Sorority Row (2009)

"Please don’t think I’m afraid of you. I run a house with fifty crazy bitches."

What makes writing reviews exciting for me is to be given the chance to recognise those films (slashers in particular) that people either have forgotten or have not been given a fair trial, due to unnecessary bad reviews. What I have discovered being a horror nut is that people who write reviews for them, particularly in everyday media do not actually like horror. Therefore they give a harsh review which is incredibly undeserved. Seen lately in reviews of Netflix's the Haunting of Bly Manor in which it was given an unfavourable review, with the first sentence of said review stating they didn’t like horror! Why review it then?

Anyway, rant over. This piece is for the stellar Sorority Row which was released in 2009. I always crave new slasher films and I am a big fan of what my fellow FilmBusters critic Adam calls ‘terrible films’. Whatever Adam! Sorority Row may not offer anything particularly new but what it does succeed in is great characters, fantastic humour and fun deaths. This is a re-imagining of the beloved 80’s The House on Sorority Row, and while this is a much loved film, for me the remake is everything I need in a slasher.

Opening the film is an incredibly long shot of a sorority party at the 'Theta Pi', in which we weave through drunk guys and gals, including a glimpse of the exceptional Carrie Fisher as house mother, all of which ends in the bedroom of our sorority sisters. We have the righteous one (the brilliant Briana Evigan), the bitch (Leah Pipes), the slut (Margo Harshman), the doormat (Jamie Chung) and the smart one (Rumer Willis). What starts as a prank on a cheating frat brother turns into murder, an act they’ll have to live with for life, or until someone pimps up the tyre iron used in the murder and starts killing these girls and some boys off for fun!

"Sorority Row is a f**king fantastic film and I will defend it until the very end."

The death scenes are fun and imaginative, utilising flare guns, alcohol bottles, dumb waiters etc. From the opening sequence, to the gory death scenes and everything in between is very well scripted and the cast go all out. There are also some absolutely killer one liners and insults thrown around, mainly by Leah Pipes’ 'Jessica' who always manages to floor me. This film of course didn’t win any of our cast Oscars, but who bloody cares?

Not forgetting the no sh*t taken performance from the greatly missed Carrie Fisher, as house mother Mrs Crenshaw. Always bringing a certain glow to even the smallest of roles, Carrie brings warmth to her character and always fights for her girls to the very end. And bellowing the epic line "Please don’t think I’m afraid of you. I run a house with fifty crazy bitches."

When people dismiss and throw away slasher films just because they don’t like them or have seen some horrible reviews, think again, you could be missing out on a great couple of hours! Sorority Row is a f**king fantastic film and I will defend it until the very end.

Now available on Amazon Prime.

4.5/5