Way back in 1996 when Scream came out, the not-too-subtle formula of blending hot women and buckets of gore proved to be a massive hit. With myriad other teen slashers following suit in the following years, it can’t be doubted that the cinema of the latter half of the nineties and early noughties undoubtedly belonged to the genre.
However, that was over a decade ago now and in the time since, each stab at the tired old concept has grown more and more tedious. So it’s not much of a shock to find that Sorority Row is another bloody chunk of tepid horror that features little in the way of scares while fruitlessly trying to compensate by dangling a gaggle of buxom beauties in front of us.
If Sorority Row was the first film to try such an outlandish and wild technique then maybe it’d be worth a watch, but the truth is that it’s just another generic slasher – nothing more, nothing less. That said, there’s nothing exactly offensive about the film other than the fact that the plotting is so lazy that it feels like another I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel – which is every bit as appealing as it sounds.
The premise follows a bunch of sorority sisters throwing a party. When one of the girls, Megan, finds out that her boyfriend has cheated on her, they decide to pay him back by having Megan fake her own death in front of him. As panic ensues and the sisters run with the gag, things take a slightly sour turn when he stabs her in an effort to drain her lungs when they dispose of the body. With the group now offloading the body for real, it seems they’re all in the clear – until a year passes and someone seemingly connected to the incident comes back to exact revenge on those involved.
As I said previously, Sorority Row isn’t a bad film per se. It’s just that it brings absolutely nothing new to the table, bar the use of a lug wrench as a weapon. On the plus side, there are some pretty inventive deaths, the performances are good – particularly from Bruce Willis and Demi Moore’s daughter, Rumer Willis – and there’s some very nice camerawork. As a result, it makes for a technically above par Blu-ray.
The image is crystalline in its clarity, with no artefacting and the dark colours are all distinct. From detail on close-ups of the girls’ gorgeous-but-anguished faces to the fast movement of the killer’s socket wrench hurtling through the air, the transfer never skips a beat. As for the sound, the Master Audio track is deep, rich, clear and makes fantastic use of the many, many audio stingers that pepper this predictable movie.
In terms of features, there’s a neat bunch loaded onto the disc, including a picture-in-picture commentary with the highly enthusiastic director, Stewart Hendler. It makes for entertaining viewing due to the fact that he sounds like Neil ‘Janitor-from-Scrubs’ Flynn. On top of that, there are a few interesting featurettes, including Killer 101, which sees the producers declaring their love for the genre and inadvertently shedding some light on why they’re quite so reluctant to go outside the lines when tackling it. You also get ‘Kill Switch’, which allows you to go through the film and skip to the next killing. It seems like a nifty feature on the surface, but the truth is that it’s actually the best scenes of the flick tacked together without the need to watch the filler stuff. Finally, the disc is polished off with a bunch of deleted scenes and outtakes – none of which are particularly great, although it helps pad out the package. It comes together to create a respectable Blu-ray for a mediocre, mildly enter
taining delve back into a claret-soaked genre that Hollywood keeps picking at every time it begins to scab over.
Overall Verdict: Daft, unbelievably unoriginal film made worthwhile by its treatment on Blu-ray. Worth a rent maybe, if all the good stuff has already been taken.
Special Features:
Deleted Scenes
‘Kill Switch’ Feature
‘Killer 101’ Featurette
Outtakes
Stories From The Set
Reviewer: Jordan Brown
