Sorority Row, 2010, movie review

One of the first things you learn when writing fiction is that the first sentence has to grab the reader and pull them in. Over time, many great works have been written with memorable first lines. “Call me Ishmael” “Happy families are all alike” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” - phrases nearly everyone has heard at some point or another. Since movies are just stories in a different medium, the same rule applies. When the first sentence of your movie is “HEY, GIVE ME BACK MY SHIRT” you know you’ve got a real winner on your hands.

For your sake, I include a brief synopsis of the main characters:

Cassidy: Closest thing the movie has to a hero/protagonist, not giant bitch

Claire: Token minority (of which I swear to God she is the only one in the movie – whitebread as far as the eye can see otherwise) she is Asian and fairly colorless

Ellie: Whiny bookish “ugly” girl with glasses, spends 90% of the movie with her face covered in tears

Megan: Got an early pass out of this heap of shit

Chuggs: Pretty much everything you need to know is in her name

Jessica: Bitch Queen of the Universe who almost certainly had something to do with the 9-11 attacks, O.J.’s book, and the Kennedy assassination

Garrett: Chuggs’ lunatic brother

The movie opens with a slow pan over a sorority house at night, which lasts around four or five minutes and seems to be trying to help the viewer fill some kind of human wasteland scavenger hunt. I guess a college party isn’t really rockin’ unless by the end of the night every participant could potentially go to prison for something or other. There are also quite a lot of strobe lights flashing in what I like to think is an effort by the one tech with a moral compass attempting to send the audience into seizures to spare them this movie. Unfortunately for me, twenty-plus years of video gaming have rendered me immune to such trickery and I stayed conscious.

Eventually we’re taken upstairs past roughly 136,000 people engaging in various stages of foreplay to a group of girls who are evidently sorority sisters, exchanging backhanded compliments. Sample: “Claire, I like you because being friends with you makes me multicultural without actually having to do anything.” By the end of this movie, a comment like that lost its power to make me flinch, but early as it was, it still stuck out. The girls blab about how cool it is to be in a sorority, and then check out a webcam which Jessica promises will be a “youtube sensation” At those words, I prepared to see something horrible. The movie didn’t let me down, showing a guy on top of a girl who appeared to be unconscious. They both still had their clothes on, but from the kiss and grind this fellow was engaging in, that wouldn’t last. The girl is Megan, and the guy is Garrett, whom we’re told was given roofies by his sister to get back with….you know what? I’m going to move on before my brain starts slamming into my skull trying to knock me unconscious. The only girl who isn’t just some one-dimensional cock-and-alcohol-repository, Cassidy, says in disbelief, “You guys drugged her?” Chuggs points out that “Date-rape sex isn’t so bad – you get laid and a nice nap afterwards” as the rest of them giggle like ninnies. I know it seems like I’m going at a glacial pace covering all kinds of individual lines, but when every single line makes me more and more convinced that a nuclear first strike on the Theta Pi sorority house is the only thing that will rescue my faith in humanity, which is already on life support from learning about the new reality show Bridalplasty, it’s kind of difficult not to.

They trash talk the guy’s technique for awhile, joking that it looks like “the dry hump Olympics” Give me a break – everyone knows you don’t even qualify to participate unless you can give a girl genital herpes through a snowsuit. Anyway, Megan, the unconscious dry-humpee, suddenly pukes up a lot of white foamy crap, causing the girls to freak out and run into the hallway, where they meet the upset Garrett stammering that she’s puking and he thinks she’s in real trouble. They dash into the room and try to revive her without success. Garrett is ordered to bring their car around to take Megan to the hospital and he accordingly runs off. As soon as he’s gone, Megan sits up and begins complaining about “fake puke all over my $800 sheets” What? Well, it’s revealed that the whole thing was set up to get back at Garrett for cheating on Megan. “You cheat on one Theta Pi, you cheat on them all” declares Jessica. “Didn’t you cheat on him first?” one of the girls interjects, a quite reasonable thing to maybe consider that is completely ignored.

So Garrett gets the car, Megan relapses into “unconsciousness” and all the girls + Garrett pile into the Escalade.

The girls are all having trouble holding in their laughter or disguising it as crying as they talk about how they’re all “accessories to murder” or at the very least, as Ellie points out, “Drugs on campus mean a 2-year suspension” which I guess is a good reason not to call the cops if there’s a dead body lying around. During all of this, Garrett freaks out to the point of panicked tears over the apparent death of a girl he appeared to genuinely love, driven higher by the driver’s frantic assertion that she thinks she missed the turn to the hospital. Oh no!

No problem – they have a backup plan, and they pull into the town of Silent Hill to consider their next move. Okay, maybe it’s just an old abandoned mine shaft with four or five fog machines just out of sight. Fooled me. Anyway, they gently deposit Megan on the ground next to the car, who surreptitiously places her cell phone next to her head to record the entire prank as they all huddle around and talk about what to do. They decide that the best thing to do would be to dismember the body and puncture the lungs, so the air is released and the body won’t float. “Everybody get some sharp sticks to dismember the body with” Jessica calls, and the girls spread out. “How long are you going to keep this up?” Cassidy demands, and Ellie says “It was funny at first, but….” Jessica responds in a low voice, “That’s why we’re doing it. It’s funny.”

Immediately following this line, the movie takes a turn for the ridiculously awesome as Garrett plunges a sharp tire iron into Megan’s chest, causing blood to spurt everywhere. He follows up with a couple more stabs, yelling that he’s releasing the air from her lungs as all the girls shriek in genuine hysteria. See, this is why you have to keep a tight rein on practical jokes – they can easily spiral out of control. Give someone a hot foot, and they may end up ruining a shoe or singeing something of yours trying to put it out. Frame someone for murder, they may decide no bullshit attempted rape charge will get them street cred in the joint and subsequently decide to ratchet up the crazy two or three hundred notches. It’s a fine line, really. Also, I’m kind of thinking that two-year suspension is looking like a pretty sweet deal at this point.

Okay, the group now has the same conversation we just heard about what to do with the body, only this time it’s for real. Jessica points out that “We’re sisters! And if I was Megan, I know what I wouldn’t want – I wouldn’t want us all to go down for this and ruin the lives of our families!” Personally if I was Megan, my family knowing what happened to their daughter would rank a little higher on my priorities than some bullshit sorority pledge to a bunch of one-dimensional walking stereotypes. I mean, for me, that’s an easy call to make. Luckily, Megan is dead, and is unable to voice these objections, and so relies on Cassidy, the only girl who isn’t morally bankrupt, to do the arguing for her. Fortunately for the girls, Cassidy sucks at arguing. I admit I shrieked with laughter as she said, appalled, “I cannot believe my ears! What about the tenets of sisterhood – trust, honor, respect?” Before I could sufficiently recover, she is answered coldly by Jessica that “you forgot two – secrecy and solidarity” Maybe it’s a girl thing, was the last thing I remember thinking before I temporarily blacked out.

The girls decide to dump Megan’s body down a mine shaft after Jessica hammers it into them that “we shouldn’t destroy the lives of our families over this!” Yeah, responsibility’s a bitch that way, ain’t it? Man, I wish I lived in a world where sorority girl logic dominated. I could easily beat a drug charge by pointing out that it would just kill my mother to find out I was a crack dealer.

The next act in this passion play takes place, as text helpfully informs us, “8 MONTHS LATER” A valedictorian, whom we soon find out is Cassidy’s boyfriend Andy, is giving a speech to hundreds of graduates. After a scene between Cassidy and Andy, we learn Theta Pi is having an end-of-the-year graduation party that day. Several more incredibly narcissistic lines were thrown in here, but if I documented every one, this review would be War and Peace with sorority girls. Just take my word for it that these people suck. During a speech by Jessica in which she mentions “our missing sister, Megan” Ellie sees who she thinks is Megan, and screams loudly, dropping her wineglass, which shatters, causing quite the scene. The girls quickly retire to the kitchen, where Jessica snaps at Ellie “That was Megan’s SISTER, dumbass!” and five seconds later the sister, Maggie, walks in, telling them she’s going to try to join Theta Pi next year. Jessica is cordial. “Friend me on Facebook, I’ll totally confirm” she graciously offers. Maggie leaves. After this, the girls’ douchebag boyfriends come into the room, making it clear they are the embodiment of every stereotype of frat boy you’ve ever heard, and engage the girls in some kind of Biggest Asshole In The Universe contest, but prove no match for Theta Pi, who have spent years mastering the art. After some more nonsensical bullshit about tonight’s party, the boyfriends leave, and…

The girls all get a picture message on their cell phones of a tire iron. What trickery is this? Jessica calls shenanigans, instantly assuming it must be Garrett, who is a creepy scumbag with a “weird sense of humor” Dismissing the incident, the girls leave the kitchen.

The next scene is with some kind of den mother or whatever, Miss Crenshaw, who gives a heartfelt speech about Theta Pi and gives them all a bracelet to symbolize the sisterhood, which every one of them scoffs at as not being expensive enough to wear and ditches them. What, you’re willing to keep a murder secret for the sake of Theta Pi’s sisterhood but not wear some $12.99 bracelet from K-Mart? Well, whatever. Miss Crenshaw leaves in her car, and the girls break up to each take care of business before the party.

Chuggs goes to some therapist or something. She finds him one-hand handcuffed to the bed, and he says “My last session ended abruptly. You and I could finish it. I have all these sample prescriptions with nowhere to go!” Chuggs takes this in stride and goes to the bathroom to “freshen up” At this point I was starting to think the movie was some kind of lost Franz Kafka story adapted to screen intended to show that deep down, every single one of us basically have souls as black as coal.

The therapist is left alone, and hears a scraping sound in the hallway. “You’ll have to make an appointment!” he yells nervously, and then tries to reach the handcuff key. He manages to grab it and unlock himself. As he stands up, the person down the hall is revealed to be some dude in a graduation gown with a mask and tire iron. He flings it at the therapist, and it squelches satisfyingly into his stupid, stupid face.

Chuggs is still walking around, swigging booze and looking for the therapist. “I don’t have time for Catch Me, Rape Me!” she calls out. Lady, if you’re willing to bone a doctor for sample prescriptions, you don’t get to bitch about five minutes of grabass.

She lies down on the couch, still drinking, and the killer slams the bottle down her throat. He then cuts her throat and blood fills the bottle. Awesome.

The scene shifts back to the sorority house, where people are already getting drunk. A girl we haven’t seen before waves a bottle around yelling “I’m wasted, bitches!” Claire sniffs to Ellie “Yeah, and by ten she’ll be pregnant” You know, I think you gave up your right to make snide morally superior remarks some time ago. Claire follows up by screwing her boyfriend in the hot tub outside in full view of everyone. No, that’s not a joke.

Meanwhile, Jessica is having dinner with her boyfriend’s father, a senator, who makes it very clear to her that since he’s in line for a VP nomination, he can’t have any scandal around his name. The scene is intended to develop Jessica’s character and motivation, but I was just waiting for the moment when Jessica offered the senator the chance to do lines off her glistening ass in the bathroom while they both beat a one-legged kitten to death with a hammer. To my shock, this did not occur.

Back to the party. There’s a shower scene for some obligatory tit shots (the movie DOES have Sorority right there in the title) in which the protagonists discuss the murder. Some unknown girl overhears while hiding in a shower stall, and after the main characters leave, she is also attacked and stabbed to death by the gown-wearing madman. Got to give him credit, he sure moves fast.

Ellie is ordered to go to the basement by Jessica for purposes of advancing the plot. She sees the torn bloody jacket they wrapped Megan in, flips out, and the girls discuss the murder some more. They attempt to contact Chuggs, but are unsuccessful, only reaching her voicemail: “Hi, this is Chuggs, leave a message after the *belch*” You know, if she hadn’t been murdered, college degree or not, she was NEVER getting out of the local Piggly Wiggly.

Claire and Ellie seem to be starting to dimly perceive the seriousness of it, but Jessica uses the opportunity to enhance her Queen Bitch of the Universe qualifications, says again that it’s Garrett being an asshole, and dismisses their concerns.

Suddenly, it’s dark and around 200 people in various stages of drunken-and-nakedness are present partying hard. Claire is acting like a frigid bitch to her douchebag boyfriend Mickey, telling him to stop “grinding his business all over her”
Mickey correctly points out she didn’t mind his business earlier in the hot tub, and equally correctly points out he could get “action from any girl here” Claire hits him in the face with a ring and stalks off. He wanders around for a few minutes, showing an amazing talent for finding the only girls in the place who wouldn’t give it up for half a can of Red Bull. Mickey eventually heads inside, action-less, and meets up with the killer in an upstairs room. The killer breaks Mickey’s leg, who shouts for help as he tries to climb down a narrow laundry chute head-first. The killer hurls his tire iron into the wall right below Mickey’s head, then rotates it so its knife pierces Mickey’s throat, and walks off with Mickey’s torso and legs sticking out of the laundry chute. I’m surprised he didn’t pants him too.

The girls get a video message from Megan’s phone, showing Garrett stabbing her, with “Meet where you killed me” and “This goes to the police in twenty minutes” The girls pile into the Escalade and Jessica tears ass down the street, with something bitchy coming out of her mouth every three seconds, but before they get very far she slams on the brakes to avoid hitting Maggie, who’s standing in the road. Maggie and Jessica have a short conversation, in which Maggie hilariously out-catty-bitches Jessica, who leaps back into the car and roars off in a snit.

Reaching the mine shaft, the girls meet Garrett, who is covered in blood and babbling. He shouts that the girls “made him do it” and when he makes a threatening move toward Cassidy, Jessica rams him twice with the car. They see he had a piece of glass and had cut his own wrists, accounting for the blood. Cassidy picks up his phone and points out he got the messages too, from Megan’s phone – it couldn’t have been him playing a prank. Could it be, as Ellie keeps fanatically insisting, Megan back from the dead to get revenge? “Only one way to find out!”

That way turns out to be lowering Cassidy into the mineshaft to see if Megan’s body is down there. Okay, this plan raised several dozen questions in my mind.

1. Why would Cassidy agree to this? Eight months ago she was blackmailed into keeping quiet about the murder, and now she’s putting her trust into her morally bankrupt friends to NOT drop the chain and leave her to die down there? All through the movie they’ve been worried Cassidy would say something, and they’ve covered up a murder once already.

2. What would this prove either way? If Megan can break the rules of time and space to come back from the dead and murder her asshole friends, does she really NEED her body to do that?

3. If the body was missing, how does that prove Megan is the one stalking them?

……

85. None of you has a fucking flashlight? Seriously?

Megan’s body (surprise) isn’t there, but “THETA PI MUST DIE” written on the mine shaft wall is.

The scene shifts as they’re heading back to the party. The place is deserted, although all the lights are still on and the music’s still playing. The girls learn from one girl who’s just leaving that they all went to some after-party bar since the annual booze consumption of France wasn’t quite enough for this graduation bash.

At this point I just wanted to see them all quickly murdered, and it was hard for me to keep paying attention closely enough to make hilarious observations. I know that they go back into the house, and Jessica breaks up a couple making out by dumping beer on them and screaming like a bitch. You could have just nudged them, but that wouldn’t disgust the audience, so I can see why you made that choice.

Claire heads outside to shut off the hot tub, which overheated and has spawned what looks like an Exxon Valdez spill of bubble bath reaching 7-foot heights all over the lawn. “Are you sure you’ll be alright?” one of the girls asks. “I’m good” Claire says, holding up a flare gun that she certainly has no idea how to use.

As Claire is wading through the bubbles, the girls’ phones go off. It’s a message from Chuggs, to Ellie, Jessica and Cassidy. “Sorry guys I won’t be able to make the party, because I’m dead” it says, with a sadface smiley at the end. “Why didn’t that message include Claire?” Jessica wonders. On cue, Claire slams into the patio door with a hose wrapped around her leg, screaming to be let in. The girls scream in response and try to open it, but fail like the failures they are and Claire is jerked back into the mound of bubbles by the hose. Bubbles fly everywhere for a moment or two, then the flare gun goes off and everything is silent.

Cassidy finally gets the stupid door open and heads outside cautiously moving toward the light from the flare. She finds the flare jammed down Claire’s throat in what I’m certain had no sordid undertones whatsoever..

The girls go upstairs looking for Jessica’s boyfriend Kyle, but instead find Maggie in Jessica’s bed. She smirks that she “hooked up with a guy – this guy” holding up a picture on Jessica’s nightstand. Jessica huffs “That’s MY guy!” and soon the two of them are engaging in another hair-pulling catfight, neither of whom seem to be aware that on the list of things to deal with at present, Who Fucked My Boyfriend should probably be temporarily relegated a little down in priority, somewhat below Try Not To Catch A Spinning Tire Iron With My Neck.

The killer misses this opportunity, however, and the girls are interrupted by Miss Crenshaw, who shoves a shotgun in Jessica’s face, saying she knows what they did. “We didn’t mean to kill Megan!” Jessica blubbers. “Kill Megan? I was talking about what you did to my house” Miss Crenshaw replies. She shoved a shotgun in Jessica’s face because she thought Jessica trashed the house? Maggie is pissed, but seems relieved when Cassidy mentions they don’t know if Megan is dead or not, and may be stalking them. Miss Crenshaw goes off to find the killer.

She finds the killer in the kitchen, and proceeds to display the same stellar aim as every faceless henchman in an action movie. The killer throws the tire iron at her. She dodges, and it sticks in the oven behind her. She then moves to stand directly in front of it as she tries to reload her shotgun. The killer shoves a table between them forward, pushing Miss Crenshaw back onto the tire iron. “Stay away from my girls!” she gasps, getting off one last sadly misaimed shotgun blast as the killer walks casually away. Miss Crenshaw dies.

Maggie is looking for the killer downstairs. She finds him, asks “Megan, is that you?” The killer lights a Molotov cocktail and hurls it at her. She screams and dodges, and the bottle bursts and sets the house on fire. I guess not. Maggie runs away.

Meanwhile, the girls discover Mickey’s body hanging out of the laundry chute, identifying him by his “ugly-ass shoes” Cassidy gets his cell phone out of his pocket, and Kyle suddenly reappears to Jessica and Cassidy. He brutally verbally degrades Jessica, in a candid depiction of most college relationships, calling her a “power whore” and tries to snatch the cell phone from Cassidy – his senator father can’t know about all this shit. I’m not really sure how the whole “keeping secrets” thing can possibly work at this point, since I don’t think you can dump a burning house with three bodies in it down a mine shaft, but whatever. Jessica hits him with a chair and the girls run as he’s temporarily incapacitated. They dart into a room where Megan’s corpse is hanging from the ceiling, rotted and decayed, her skull staring sightlessly. “Wow, she looks terrible” deadpans Jessica, just in case the audience was gaining some sympathy for her.

Kyle manages to catch up to them, knock Jessica out and slam Cassidy against a wall. “Looks like your boyfriend isn’t here to save you!” he sneers, and immediately gets an axe to the back of the head, courtesy of Andy. I’m tending to notice ironic deaths are to this movie what lens flares were to Abrams’ Star Trek.

Andy and Cassidy embrace, with Cassidy thankful he saved her….until she notices the tire iron in his pocket. She jerks away from him, horrified. Andy is hurt. “I did all this for YOU!” he says, which makes my birthday present to my girlfriend of a paperback book look kind of lame, and reveals why he killed everyone (no one else can know, or it’d be a Damocles’ sword over Andy and Cassidy’s relationship). He also denigrates Theta Pi, calling them all worthless bitches. Jessica stammers that this is okay, they can fix this. Andy, disagreeing, slams the tire iron through Jessica's head in midsentence, remarking "That girl really needs to shut her mouth." He asks Cassidy to cooperate with him. After a moment’s hesitation, Cassidy agrees, and appears to be genuinely on board with the whole thing. Ladies and gentlemen, Gone With The Wind, Bridge on the River Kwai, The Green Mile, Sorority Row?

Sadly, the movie’s inclusion on my list of best movies of all time was not to be. Andy cheerfully says “Great! Now let’s go kill Ellie and we can get out of here!” Cassidy balks at killing Ellie, and Andy sternly reminds her that Ellie is the weakest link of all, and if they’re gonna do this whole thing, everyone who knows except for them has to die. Cassidy agrees again, and they split up – but when Cassidy finds Ellie, she tells her they have to get out of here and they search for an exit that isn’t in flames.

Andy shows up again, justifiably pissed, and the final fight takes place in the living room, which is covered in flames. Maggie is also trapped in the room. Andy soliloquizes to Cassidy like a Bond villain about to be dropped into his own shark tank, and Ellie takes the opportunity to beat cheeks out of there. Andy, who spent the movie throwing a tire iron with freakish accuracy and killing with a brutal efficiency a Mafioso would be hard pressed to match, suddenly becomes afflicted with End Of The Movie Villain’s Disease and turns into some kind of Mr. Magoo-like character who can’t finish off the three screaming ninnies. He chops his tire iron into the floor, causing part of it to collapse, and Ellie reappears with Miss Crenshaw’s shotgun. She blasts Andy, who falls through the floor and into a basement that’s awash in flame, in a clear representation of Andy plunging into Hell. The girls walk out of the burning house in slow motion in a row with dramatic music playing, as if they’re the goddamn Fantastic Four or something. Firefighters show up, and the scene fades out.

The next scene is “FIFTEEN MONTHS LATER – RUSH WEEK” showing ANOTHER scene at the Theta Pi house packed full of stupid college Greek bullshit, with water balloons, shirtless guys tied to trees, and enough booze around to float a battleship on. A bunch of girls are gathered around the entrance, clapping and chanting “Theta Pi, says goodbye!” over and over again. As the camera pulls out toward the street, a hand holding what looks like a tire iron moves into view and a “scary” note plays. We see just above the hand a V-cut into the wrist. Garrett?

On one level, I was so disappointed with this movie. This was one of those rare films that sucked taint 95% of the way through it, then came up with a twist so awesome I could have cried, and then pulled back, apparently startled by its brief brush with true glory, and went the old standby slasher flick route. Despite that, I still recommend this movie – for 2010, the gore is almost nonexistent, just like the morals, the laughs just keep coming, and the movie breathes fresh life into the “killing off of ridiculous stereotypes one by one” genre. I consider the two times I watched this movie to write this review to be three and a half hours well spent.