Sorority Row

Sorority Row
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Stewart Hendler
Written by	Josh Stolberg Pete Goldfinger
Produced by	Darrin Holender Mike Karz
Starring	Briana Evigan Leah Pipes Rumer Willis Jamie Chung Audrina Patridge Julian Morris Margo Harshman Matt Lanter Carrie Fisher
Cinematography	Ken Seng
Edited by	Elliot Greenberg
Music by	Lucian Piane
Distributed by	Summit Entertainment E1 Entertainment
Release dates	September 9, 2009 (2009-09-09) (United Kingdom) September 11, 2009 (United States)
Running time	101 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$12,500,000
Box office	$26,735,797

Sorority Row is a 2009 American slasher film. Directed by Stewart Hendler, the film stars Briana Evigan, Leah Pipes, Rumer Willis, Jamie Chung, Margo Harshman, Audrina Patridge, and Carrie Fisher. Produced by Summit Entertainment and written by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger. The film is a re-imagining of the 1983 slasher film The House on Sorority Row.

Plot

Run by Mrs. Crenshaw, the college sorority Theta Pi is home to seniors and best friends Jessica, Cassidy, Ellie, Claire, Chugs and Megan who, despite Mrs. Crenshaw's best efforts, constantly throw wild parties. During one of these parties, Megan discovers her boyfriend Garrett is cheating on her and with her friends help, they decide to pull an elaborate prank on him as payback, faking her own death while making out with him. With help from the sisters, Garrett brings Megan out to a steel mill, intent on dropping her body down a mineshaft. After the sisters (jokingly) mention they need to release the air out of her lungs so her body won't rise to the top, Garrett stabs Megan through the chest with a tire iron, actually killing her. Panicking, the group plan to dump Megan's body in the mineshaft. Then, they all begin to cry and scream. Cassidy wants no part of this and walks away to get reception on her phone to call for help. When she returns the group have already dumped Megan's body down the mineshaft. They then reveal that they will all say Cassidy stabbed Megan as she was going to tell the police.

Eight months later, during the party held after graduation, the girls all receive a picture sent to their phones: a hooded figure holding the bloody tire iron Garrett used to kill Megan. As the girls become increasingly worried, Chugs reveals that after the incident, Garrett has been seeing a therapist and has developed a weird sense of humor. Jessica takes the lead and insists it is merely a prank by him and continue with the party. Megan's sister, Maggie, also arrives, wanting to honor her sister's memory by attending the party but filled with guilt, Ellie thinks that Maggie is Megan, screams, then passes out. Later, Chugs leaves the party to go to her therapist appointment. While she is there, not knowing that her therapist was killed (he is stabbed in the face with the tire iron, which now has a spear end, a harpoon end, and a knife end) she lies down and drinks champagne. The killer appears and shoves the bottle deep into her throat and shatters it from the outside with the tire iron's knife end.

Later, another sorority girl, Joanna, is showering when she overhears Jessica and Claire mention their responsibility to Megan's death. Joanna is then killed by the hooded figure who stabs the tire iron's spear end through her chin. In the basement, Ellie finds Cassidy's blood-stained jacket (which the group had wrapped Megan's body in before dropping her into the mine). During the party, Claire and her boyfriend Mickey break up. Later that night, Mickey is killed when the tire iron's knife end goes through his throat, with Ellie witnessing the killing. The girls regroup and all receive a text message containing a clip of Megan's death and a message telling them to go to the mine shaft or the clip would be sent to the police in twenty minutes. Driving to the shaft, the girls find Garrett with slit wrists. Thinking the obviously delusional Garrett is the one stalking them, Jessica runs over him when he comes at the girls quickly with a mirror shard, discovering afterward Garrett has been receiving the same messages they have, proving he is not the killer. Cassidy is lowered into the mineshaft by a chain that breaks. Cassidy falls into the mineshaft and finds the bloody blanket but not Megan's body. Cassidy then sees blood stains on a rock saying, "Theta Pi must die".

After the girls return to the now empty sorority house, Jessica enters the house to look for her boyfriend, Kyle, while Claire makes her way to turn off the overheated Jacuzzi which has covered the back of the house in bubbles. Cassidy receives a text message from Chugs's cell phone, telling them that she is dead. They then notice that the text didn't include Claire's name. Suddenly, Claire appears behind them at the door, screaming and panicking, she franticly tries to open the door, but it is jammed. As Cassidy and Jessica struggle to get Claire into the house, Cassidy notices a wire wrapped around Claires ankle. Seconds later, Claire is pulled by the wire and dragged into the bubbles. After finally getting the door to open, Cassidy sees the hooded figure in the bubbles and the flare gun goes off. Cassidy goes into the bubbles to find Claire, only to find that she has been shot in the mouth with a flare gun (light and smoke filling her mouth from the flare, her neck bubbling and melting from the heat) and the killer has disappeared. Afterwards, Jessica finds Maggie in her bed and the two engage in a cat fight after Maggie reveals she slept with Kyle. Mrs. Crenshaw finds them and the girls confess at gunpoint that they were responsible for Megan's death. Mrs. Crenshaw tells the girls to lock themselves in a bedroom and to call the police while she searches for the killer. However, Mrs. Crenshaw is stabbed in the chest with the tire iron's harpoon end in the kitchen, leaving only Jessica, Cassidy, Ellie and Maggie.

While Maggie becomes trapped when the killer sets the house on fire with a Molotov cocktail, Cassidy and Jessica decide to check Mickey’s body for a cell phone to call for help (while Ellie hides upstairs) and run into Kyle who injures Jessica after getting into a fight with her. Kyle threatens Jessica only to be hit on the face by Cassidy with a fire extinguisher. Cassidy and Jessica flee to an under-renovation bathroom where they find the house on fire and Megan's decaying corpse which is hanging in the shower. As Jessica checks the bathroom door, Kyle swings an axe through it, knocking her out. He catches Cassidy and tells her that her boyfriend is nowhere to save her. He's then stabbed on the head with the axe from behind by Andy, Cassidy's boyfriend, who turns out to be the real killer. Next, Andy kills Jessica as she starts to panic by stabbing her in the mouth with the tire iron's spear end before telling Cassidy that he just wanted to protect her, killing everyone who knew about her involvement in Megan's death so they could never tell anyone else and reveal she was involved.

Playing along with her mental boyfriend, Cassidy tells Andy that Ellie is in the basement, and while Andy goes to look for her, Cassidy fetches Ellie from upstairs and they try to run but are attacked by Andy. Telling Ellie to flee, Cassidy hits Andy with a lamp and tries to escape, but stops to help Maggie out of the burning house, allowing Andy to catch up and leave her dangling from a hole in the floor (while the fire is still active). As Andy prepares to finish Cassidy off, Ellie appears and blasts him with Mrs. Crenshaw's shotgun. He falls backward onto the burning floor, which collapses, plunging him into the fire-engulfed basement. With Andy dead, Ellie pulls Cassidy back up and the two save Maggie. The trio escape from the burning sorority house, just as emergency personnel arrive onscene.

Fifteen months later, Theta Pi is being renovated from the fire and Maggie is now a Theta sister. As the girls sing the Theta Pi song, a figure with a scarred red wrist (Garrett) is seen holding a garden tool. And then it ends.

Cast

The cast in 2009.

• Briana Evigan as Cassidy Tappan
• Leah Pipes as Jessica Pierson
• Rumer Willis as Ellie Morris
• Jamie Chung as Claire Wen
• Margo Harshman as Charlene "Chugs" Bradley
• Audrina Patridge as Megan Blaire
• Julian Morris as Andy Richards
• Carrie Fisher as Mrs. Crenshaw
• Matt O'Leary as Garrett Bradley
• Matt Lanter as Kyle Tyson
• Caroline D' Amore as Maggie Blaire
• Maxx Hennard as Mickey Donaldson

Production

Sorority Row entered pre-production in January 2008. Principal photography began on October 16, 2008 in the Pittsburgh area. Although set in Anytown, USA, producers of the film wanted to take advantage of Pennsylvania state tax credits (much like the 2009 remake of My Bloody Valentine) and the strength of local film crews. The film was mostly shot at night in Munhall, one block from the Carnegie Library of Homestead, where about 10 houses were dressed to resemble a sorority row. The graduation scene for the film's fictional Rosman University (named after the writer/director of The House on Sorority Row) was shot outside of Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood. Interiors of the Theta Pi sorority were filmed on sets built in a warehouse near Crafton, Pennsylvania. Filming ended on March 26, 2009. The film was officially completed on May 2, 2009.

Soundtrack

The film's soundtrack was released by E1 Records on September 1, 2009, and featured music by musical artists such as Shwayze, Ladytron, Lykke Li, Aimee Allen, and Camera Obscura, among others. The album received 2.5 out of 5 stars from Allmusic, stating: "Of the 15 tracks, only a few are even remotely memorable (Ladytron's "Ghosts," Camera Obscura's "Tears for Affairs," and Dragonette's "booty" anthem "I Get Around" come to mind), but there's hardly a dull moment."

Reception

Reviews upon release started out strongly, but soon the consensus turned to mixed. Review website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 24% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based upon a sample of 68. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating based on reviews from mainstream critics, the film received a score of 24 out of 100, based on eleven reviews, and was categorized as receiving "generally unfavorable reviews". The audience reaction was slightly better, earning 44% from RottenTomatoes users. Most critics praised the performances, especially Leah Pipes (Jessica).

The film grossed $5,059,802 during its opening weekend, placing sixth in the process. It then fell more than 50% during its second weekend weekend of release, while finishing with $8,965,282 in total. Internationally its performance was mixed compared to its domestic run. It did manage fourth place in its debut in the UK, while it missed the top ten in both Australia and Mexico.

Release

Sorority Row was released on September 9, 2009 in the UK and September 11, 2009 in the USA. The DVD and Blu-Ray was released on the 11th January, 2010 in the UK and the 23rd February, 2010 in the US.

Sequel

Briana Evigan claimed that a script is already being written for a sequel, but that was before the film was released. It is yet to be confirmed if it is true or not.

External links

• Official website
• Sorority Row at IMDb
• ‹The template AllMovie title is being considered for deletion.› Sorority Row at AllMovie
• Sorority Row at Rotten Tomatoes
• Sorority Row at Box Office Mojo