A group of sorority girls, Cassidy, Chugs, Ellie, Clare, Megan and group leader and over all bitch Jessica, go to some lengths to play a prank on Garret, the brother of one of their group. However it of course goes terribly wrong when Megan is killed. Fearful for what impact this will have on their future they decide to dump the body down an old shaft and keep what happened a secret. A year passes and it seems that they have somehow managed to get away with it scot free but……a hooded killer with an interesting and unique weapon within this genre, shows up on the night of their graduation…….
Now I will always give a remake a go if done properly, this is provided the original movie is over 30 odd years old. In addition to this, I am not one of these pretentious types that will simply dismiss the mere notion of a remake and bang on about the original. Having said all this however, the spate of remakes over the years have not really backed up my case for supporting them and they never really tick the boxes that they should bar the odd exception and this is one of them.
The premise is simple, as after the introductory death and the cover up, the hooded killer, picks off each member of the group as well as some that just happened to be associated with them in a variety of inventive ways, which for any slasher fan is kind of the real hook as to why we watch these movies and I guess, the only real difference to the movies I mentioned earlier.
The cast do a decent job of enticing the viewer want to go along with them on this ride, but let’s be honest, we don’t need them to turn in Oscar-nominated performances to be able to do this, although to their credit, they don’t just go through the motions either and Brianna Evigan as lead heroine Cassidy, Rumour Willis (yes, daughter of Bruce) as Ellie and Leah Pipes as Jessica, really stood out, in particular the latter with some fantastic dark humour.
All of this builds up to the reveal of the killer/s and here is where this falls down a little as the rationale for why he/she was offing everyone is pretty weak, but for the proceeding 90 odd minutes, I would certainly recommend this, as it is definitely worth a go.
For self-confessed slasher fans like myself, Sorority Row had a real old school vibe to it and felt like it could have been made around the time of Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer or Urban Legend, which is a huge plus point as I loved those movies and still do!