Sorority Row

As one would guess, this is one of the recent spate of horror remakes, being a reimagining of the 1983 slasher The House on Sorority Row.  The premise is exactly the same except a different person dies in the first act.  In this updating by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger, with Stewart Hendler directing, a group of six sorority sisters from the Theta Pi house decide to get revenge on Garrett, who has cheated on Megan. 
 
Setting up a romantic night during a part, Garrett gives Megan what he's been told are uppers and she fakes a fit and begins foaming at the mouth.  Garrett rushes out the room and meets the others sisters who have been watching via webcam in the room next door and asks for help.  They go in and say she needs medical attention so put her in a car and they all drive off.  Going nowhere near a hospital, they travel to an old quarry where there are some mineshafts and tell Garrett that she is dead. 
 

Cassidy, the alpha female of the group, says that they can't report this as it'll ruin their lives so they'll have to dispose of the body.  The distraught Garrett takes one of her words of wisdom, that the body will float with air in the lungs, so seriously that he grabs the tyre iron from the car and plunges it though Megan's chest.   What was only pretend planning now becomes deadly serious and they decide to drop the body and murder weapon down a mineshaft.
 
A year later and after graduation, a mysterious text is sent to each girl with a picture of the tyre iron, indicating that someone knows - but who?  Shortly after, a cloaked figure with a modified tyre iron, begins killing anyone with knowledge of what happened, however tenuous, and some people who just happen to be in the way.
 
This is a good set up for a slasher film and the bickering amongst the conspirators makes Sorority Row a blend of I Know What You Did Last Summer, Very Bad Things and Mean Girls.  The cast are well established with Briana Evigan as a wonderfully bitchy Cassidy, Leah Pipes is good as Jessica the moral compass of the group and Rumer Willis' Ellie is a very effective scream queen.   You also have Carrie Fisher as the house mother who has a very assured screen presence.
 
Sorority Row is a stylishly directed and well plotted slasher with enough possible candidates to keep you guessing as to the killer's identity well into the third act.  The murder scenes are very well, if you pardon the pun, executed with the killer obviously having some sort of mouth fetish as they target that area in particularly gruesome ways.  The film benefits from being aimed at an adult audience and isn't an anaemic PG-13 remake, revelling in the gore and occasional gratuitous nudity that the R certificate (15 over here) permitted.
 
I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected and it's one of the more entertaining and respectable remakes of late.

The Disc

 
Extra Features
The commentary, with director Stewart Hendler and actresses Briana Evigan, Margo Harshman, Rumer Willis and Leah Pipes is fairly entertaining and informative and, because the girls sound so similar, the addition of picture-in-picture helps you know which one is talking.
 
Sorority Secrets: Stories from the Set is a reasonable, but brief, making of with behind the scenes, b-roll footage and interviews.
 
Killer 101 is a fourteen minute piece with the director and screenwriters talking about slasher movies and the influences on Sorority Row.  Kill Switch demonstrates their attention to the 'kill' scenes by fast forwarding through the movie from one death to the next and reducing the film to a 10 minute blood fest.
 
There is a selection of deleted/extended scenes, each introduced by Hendler who explains the omission, all down to tension and pacing.  There are also some outtakes which aren't particularly funny.
 
Most of these are thankfully presented in HD.  There is an easter egg, which isn't too hard to find, showing some of the cast practicing a scene in the showers.
 
The Picture
The disc is very well authored with a high quality 1080p picture which has vivid colours and decent black levels so you don't lose anything in the darker or night scenes.  The deaths are all very well constructed and set up and the effects don't disappoint.
 
The Sound
The only track is DTS-HD Master Audio which does a great job with the dialogue, atmospherics and jumps.  The aural stabs are well synced with the action and help to emphasise the scares and build tension and the film is well scored.
 
Final Thoughts
I'm no fan of the recent spate of horror remakes, hating the likes of the Halloween, The Wicker Man and Last House on the Left updates and even things like Prom Night are vastly inferior to the originals.  Sorority Row benefits from The House on Sorority Row not being a classic or particularly well regarded film and this update is perfectly acceptable with fine performances all round, well orchestrated death scenes and decent direction.  It isn't great, but it's certainly worth at least a rental.