Sorority Row

Recent horror movies like Drag Me To Hell gave a faint glimmer of hope that the genre was at last escaping the formulaic slasher movie stereotype it had fallen into. But then Stewart Hendler’s Sorority Row comes along and kills that hope with a lug wrench.

The ridiculous plot centers around sorority Theta Pi that decides one night at a party to take revenge on Garrett (Matt O’Leary) for cheating on his girlfriend, sorority sister Megan (Audrina Patridge). So the girls hatch a plot involving roofies, a drunken hookup and Megan pretending to choke on her own vomit and die­—what bulimic brilliance!

When the group drives her out to an abandoned mine to dispose of the “body,” the prank goes horribly wrong as Garrett, not realizing Megan is alive, impales her with a lug wrench to fit her down a mine shaft. The group then decides to leave the body and swear silence in order to avoid repercussions. Eight months later, a hooded killer (presumably Megan’s ghost) begins picking off the members of Theta Pi one by one with—you guessed it—a bladed lug wrench. What ensues is the same slasher film we’ve all seen a million times, complete with a climactic showdown revealing the killer’s identity.

It’s hard to focus on just one of the many terrible aspects of this film, but the killer’s choice of weapon stands out amidst the atrocity. Has it truly come to a lug wrench, brainstorming horror-film writers? Maybe instead of trying to differentiate by way of the weapons department, they could have put all that time and effort toward producing an original and compelling story. Not even a cameo appearance from Carrie Fisher as sorority house caretaker Mrs. Crenshaw can salvage this horrible, horrible movie.

At least Sorority Row gives hope to girls: there’s actually something worse than sorority rush.