MOVIE REVIEW
Sorority Row (2009)
Michael Desmond/Summit Entertainment
Within its first 15 minutes, “Sorority Row” is already batting with a two-strike count. Before the opening credits even begin, the knowledge that the film is yet another tired horror remake is present, although the original in this case is a mostly-unloved piece of 1983 trash, “The House on Sorority Row.” The void of creativity sets in from jump, and once the central set-up — six sorority sisters stage a prank that follies into murder and then an agreed-upon cover up — is established, director Stewart Hendler’s cue seems to come directly from 1997’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” Let’s tally the offenses up, now: “Sorority Row” is a remake (first strike) that totally plunders from a horror film that today’s generation knows well (there’s the second). Ask any lawyer worth his graduate-school diploma about what happens to double offenders. And then tell Mr. M.B.A. to behold an exception, because, some how, some way, “Sorority Row” overcomes such obstacles and chalks up one of the year’s most successfully executed horror films.