Not Hungry for Theta Pie

Coming from a Latin term that means "sister," the word sorority is simply a reference to an organization of women. But women who (a) are young, and (b) feel the need to put Greek letters as the name of their organization are as bad as their male fraternity member counterparts.

Let's face it; there are loads of people in this life who deserve to fall asleep at the wheel, run off the road, and slam into a tree in a drunken stupor (more power to the tree if the crash is fatal). College partiers, like investment bankers, are the worst kind. They suck. They stay out late. They keep people up at nights. They deserve what they get. Call it karma, or I don't care what you call it. They suck.

Sorority Row sucks. Title-wise, it's a far too obvious re-do of 1983's The House on Sorority Row. In content, however, it's nothing more than I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) brought back to life with fresh sets of bra-clad (and sometimes not) tits. Sorority Row is not witty or impressively written. The acting is nothing to speak of by any means, but the teen-marketed terror is accompanied by one impressive feat, and that is, cool comic relief.

Even the superior Drag Me to Hell didn't quite nail it in perfecting the unstable mixture of horror and humor. It went one direction and then it went the other. Sorority Row pulls its weight in keeping the terror tension up with the humor in equally high gear: Girl One: "Please, God! Don't let me get killed!" Girl Two: "Don't give him any ideas!"

In a convincingly impassioned tone, a shotgun-wielding Mrs. Crenshaw (Carrie Fisher) declares: "Please don't think I'm afraid of you. I run a house with fifty crazy bitches!" Mrs. Crenshaw is the head of Theta Pi, a close-nit, secrecy-valuing sorority (a.k.a., a society of brainless snoots) who suddenly have a lot more to talk about than hot guys and treatments for yeast infections when a prank gone wrong makes them all the targets of a vicious serial killer.

Wouldn't you know, five college juniors - Cassidy (Briana Evigan), Claire (Jamie Chung), Ellie (Rumer Willis), Jessica (Leah Pipes), and Megan (Audrina Patridge) - are compelled to put down the alcohol and the nail polish just long enough to duck the slashes of a sharpened tire iron-wielding murderer. From boyfriends to bubble baths to cell phones and doctors who trade medication for sex, Sorority Row gives us everything we don't need along with the highly sought after killing.

The killing itself isn't very good either. For one thing, people die too easily and too quickly; and for another thing, there's that problem of how someone who never killed anyone before suddenly becomes so good at it. The killer can move as stealthfully as a Navy Seal and can hoist up bodies with extreme ease. Fearless and relentless, the perpetrator sets out to kill with the cold-blooded calculation of Arthur Shawcross.

Need I mention that the police never arrive on time? I didn't need to. You already knew that. D+

(JH)