Sorority Row (2009)

A prank gone awry leads to several sorority sisters covering up the death of one of their own. You can guess the rest.

Does the pleasure derived from a viewing experience change significantly when the viewer absolutely despises every potential victim (which in this case occurs right about the time the opening credits cease)? To be fair, our heroines are all tied to the (accidental) murder and cover up involving their friend so pathos was likely to be in short supply anyway, but come on now movie, what do you expect of me when every character is irrepressibly vile and contemptuous while possessing not a single iota of genuine humanity? Were the makers of Sorority Row so clueless about the slasher genre that they somehow believed that its fans want nothing more than to bask in the bloody set pieces that spring up around long bouts of inane, bitchy banter? If so, than they failed in that regard as well as the deaths are neither gratuitous nor inventive enough to forgive glossing over some of the most basic tenets of storytelling. Unless you consider putting glasses on "the smart one" or consistently highlighting how one of the girls is sluttier than the rest as proper character development, then all that is left for a suitable viewing experience is buckets of blood and gore which never do come.

Everything else is exactly what you would expect from a post-Scream mainstream slasher right down to the multiple red herrings that lead to a killer's identity that so flimsily ties to the rest of the film it is borderline insulting. I am going to spoil this one for you though spoil is likely too strong of a word here. The killer turns out to be one of the girl's boyfriends who is so concerned that her mistake will affect his family's good name (dear old Dad is a US Senator) that he sets out to kill the dozen or so people that may have knowledge of the event. The only thing more unbelievable than that reveal is the fact that Rumer Willis' character gets hit on twice during the movie. Damn, I think the bitchiness rubbed off.

3/10