SORORITY ROW

US, 2009, 98 minutes, Colour.
Briana Evigan, Rumer Willis, Jamie Chung, Leah Pipes, Audrina Patridge, Matt O’ Leary, Julian Morris, Carrie Fisher.
Directed by Stewart Hendler.

A re-make of a 1983 film which, looking at the review I wrote at the time, was a routine slasher movie of the period (after all it is 31 years since Halloween) but better than the usual, The House on Sorority Row.

Now for Sorority Row. When the central characters are college students who have pulled a prank on an obnoxious young man by setting him up to think that he has killed his girlfriend – and then he does, so that they have to conceal the body, well, they aren't particularly likeable. And it is not easy to be too worried when they start to be picked off on their graduation day by a hooded figure with a deadly weapon. That is Sorority Row, a concoction of a slasher thriller that does not spend very much time on character development and then starts to kill off extra characters whom one has barely glimpsed (there is a shower scene) for no apparent reason. While the reason does become clearer at the end when the killer is unhooded, the identity and motivation of the killer is more than a little suspect. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore's daughter, Rumer, is one of the sorority and Carrie Fisher has to mouthe some lines she probably would never want to write in one of her books.

A rather bypassable thriller.

1.Familiar slasher material? Remake of the original?

2.The college, the campus? Authentic – stylised for this kind of film?

3.The tone, the practical joke, going wrong? The attitude of the women? Towards men? The victim? The transition to the graduation, the graduation day and the terrors?

4.The focus on Jessica, glamour, leader, arrogant? The sorority? Ellie, Claire, Chugs, Cassidy? With Megan? Their pledges to each other? This theme running throughout the film – loyalties and betrayals?

5.The set-up, Garrett, Megan, her pretending to have died? Taking her to the mineshaft? Garrett and his reaction, stabbing her? Throwing the body down the shaft? The repercussions? The attitude of each of the girls? Cassidy and her hesitation – then going along with the group?

6.The graduation, forgetting about Megan? The notes? The hooded character? The arbitrary killing off of the characters? Threat and menace? The threat to the psychiatrist, Chugs? To the girl in the shower overhearing the news – and the plausibility of the murderer being at hand to hear this? The murder of the house mother? The build-up to the confrontation with the girls? The murder of each?

7.Suspicions on the wealthy young man, his father and his threats to Jessica? Her ambitions? His ambitions? - and the screenplay misleading the audience that he was the killer?

8.Andy, with Cassidy, her sending him away, his being the valedictorian? Suddenly being revealed as the murderer, his motivations, his madness? The house, the darkness? The killings? The confrontation and his death? Ellie and her previous timidity, becoming a woman of action?

9.The appearance of the murderer at the end with an axe – the routine horror film ending?