Movie Review: Sorortiy Row

Oh god, oh man, Oh god, Oh man. I just got down to the bottom of the barrel. There was some slashers in the 80's that were underrated classics. The rest...not so much. But House On Sorority Row was one of those slashers that had effort put into it. It may not be up to par like Halloween Or Friday The 13th, though it hits the right notes. So why is it getting remade? I guess the studios involved took advantage of it being an obscure slasher. What this ends up being is a farce, ripping off films like Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Urban Legend all in one take. It's even more ridiculous and dumb than the Black Christmas Remake. And although I have my hangups about that remake, at least the cinematography and the directing was good. Lots of shaky cam, dark scenes, and CGI with this one. What makes it worse is that the female characters are incredibly superficial and catty with one another. Trust me, you guys, there is a lot of shadiness going on here. Just like the last two movies, this is a honk of shit. I will give the film this though, at least it doesn't take itself too seriously. At least it knows it's a piece of crap. But it's yet another forgettable waste of time. Just another shitty slasher film.
The Story: Bitchy sorority girls pulls a prank on one of the girls' boyfriend. Prank goes wrong which actually gets one of the girls killed. The girls soon hide the body. One year later, someone wants revenge. Blah, Blah, Blah.

Woo boy, if you thought the girls from Black Christmas were bad, these girls will give them a run for their money. I mean in the original, the girls were somewhere close to tolerable to decent, even the Alpha Bitch in that movie had likeable moments. But oh no, all the girls in this movie does is bitch, bitch, bitch. And when they play a quite elaborate prank on guy in the opening scene, right off the bat you see how dumb and unlikable they really are. Even when things start to go array, all the girls talk about is who's boyfriend cheated on who, who's backstabbing who, It shows how far from reality these characters are. One last note, how the hell are they even friends in the first place? I don't know and I don't care.

We have Cassidy, who is the moral compass of the group, because this movie sure as hell need one. Witty, smart, strong-wiled, and sarcastic, it shows that Cassidy may be a good girl but takes no crap, especially from Sorority Tyrant Jessica.

Brianna Evigan displays a strong performance despites this movie's faults and carries it in stride.

Jessica is the ultimate Alpha Bitch, ramping and raging every step she takes. She is unlikeable from the start, and even if you see a shred of decency in her, she gets worse as the story progresses, not really facing responsibilities for her actions and think she can talk her way out of things. She is mean and spiteful towards here sorority sisters even though they feel traumatized about what happened (Hell, some of them. I'm not giving these characters TOO much credit).

Although the character is quite hateful, I can see that Leah Pipes had fun with the role and did a good performance.

Ellie is basically the typical hysterical woman in horror film. She is the shy, timid, virginal girl but that doesn't mean she can have her catty moments too.

And by the end of the film, she finally takes charge and saves the day even though through the duration of the movie she came off as utterly useless, so it was quite a surprise. Rumer Willis actually did an okay job, I wouldn't say it's her strongest performance but she was fine.

Claire doesn't really have that much development to fall back on, but at least she's one of the decent sorority sisters yet not so bright either. Her "story arc" involves with her having a douchebag boyfriend. That's it. That's all I could think of.

Chugs is probably one of the funniest characters. Funny as in laughably written. This girl is far from a bimbo as she does have some wit, but at the same time, she still is a terribly written drunken mess.

Then there is Ms. Crenshaw played by Princess Leia Herself, Carrie Fisher. She pretty much stole the show for me and knew what kind of movie she was in. She should deserved much more screen time than this movie give her credit for.

Lastly we have Audrina Patridge as the ditzy Megan. There really wasn't a reason for her part in the movie other than glorified cameo. Just like Paris Hilton from House Of Wax, she was only cast sordidly for her reality show status.

Special Mention goes to Megan's somewhat vapid younger sister Maggie, who somehow sleep with another girl's boyfriend yet still manages to survive the movie. But who cares about rules in this movie?
On To The Boys:

You have Cassidy's nice, caring boyfriend Andy played by the handsome and sexy Julian Morris.

Jessica's WASPY, preppy boyfriend Kyle played by the equally handsome and sexy Matt Lanter.

Then we have...Garret, the ex-boyfriend of the past-deceased Megan, who's just plain creepy. He's played by Matt O'Leary.
The writing is what you expect from a dumb movie like this, so I don't have to go any further. And what supposed to be filled with suspense and tension is replaced with non-stop partying from the dumb, idiotic college students. These girls sure love to party I'll tell you that. But the directing is twice as bad. When you watch this movie in which I hope you don't, you'll get a lot of motion sickness. Seriously, the did the cameraman have a vibrator up his back? But Let me get down to the movie's twist (yes, there is a twist as always) and the killer's motives:

So Andy and Kyle are the killers. Their reasoning? They couldn't stand how bitchy and vapid the girls are. And that's when I knew how beyond dumb this movie is. So Kyle is killed off and Andy is killed off in the most over-the-top fashion with laughable CGI.

And off the three remaining girls go, walking triumphantly like Charlie's Angels rejects. Again, what a piece of crap. I guess I have to wash out my eyes now.
The Verdict? Guys, do the honors and focus on the joys of a classic 80's slasher. It certainly has a lot of quality than this film does because the movie is a sad example of how modern horror has become. Milking out any crap that is worth milking out. Although some of you see this as so bad, it's good, let me remind you that has no creativity, no clever writing, and god-awful directing. Just full on disastrous.
My Last Word: Please, please avoid this.

 

Movie Review: Friday The 13th (2009)

It has come to this, people and I am wallowing in my own pain. As you all may know, I don't like this remake. This is what I call Michael Bay Bullshit. And I can't help to say that Michael Bay contributed to some of the writing as most of it is sophomoric and juvenile. Apparently drunk off the success of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, Michael Bay thought he could remake just about any horror film he could desire. Well, the downside is, Bay doesn't know shit about horror. While in the process of making this movie, Michael Bay was the one who said summer camps are NOT scary. Leave it to Michael Bay to say that summer camps aren't scary, real genius here. It comes to show that he has not watched any of the Friday films and clearly not a fan. I am literally watching a parody of a movie right now. All of the clichés of a slasher film is totally exaggerated. There was just no effort put into this, no effort at all. The characters are beyond obnoxious, the directing is shitty, the death scenes are lackluster, and the sex scenes and nudity are just cringeworthy. Am I watching hardcore porn here? I thought this was a horror film? Okay before I go further into this, I know the Friday The 13th films aren't....well, Shakesphere. But they are one of those movies where you grew up with, had fun watching, enjoying all of the efforts the filmmakers put into it. It's not art but it's the art of horror filmmaking. But this remake, reboot, re-whatever, is not art, it's a travesty. Nothing but overpolished exploitative trash. Period.
The Story: A bunch of idiots goes on a camping trip to look for marijuana. They get killed by Jason. Part 2: A bunch of idiots go to a vacation lodge to party (really?). They get killed by Jason. Lather, Rinse, and Repeat, people

The characters in this movie is so repulsive: A bunch of drunken college idiots we can't wait to see get slaughtered. Just take a look at this picture. Who were they trying to cast Abercrombie and Fitch models? Then again, Michael Bay is so eager to have beautiful women on screen just to exploit them. The guys are marijuana-obsessed, drunken douchebags and the girls are big-breasted party-girl bimbos if you count out the female leads. Okay, there probably wasn't any full on character development in the original movies, but at least they seem like likeable, real people with little personality quirks that makes them relatable. In this movie, these are nothing but cardboard cutouts, Spring Break MTV rejects, who all have awful screen presence.

I guess Jared Padalecki tried with what he was given but his performance was kind of phoned in. I just can't separate his character from Supernatural. And like Jensen Ackles from My Bloody Valentine, I just wasn't invested in his character of Clay. He's supposed to be this Tommy Jarvis knock-off but he has neither the charm or the likeability of that character to leave an impression on me.

And get this, he leaves a guy to die at Jason's hands because he think he's bait. It just comes to show that even though he's the hero, he is just as selfish and useless as the idiotic twats in this film.

Jenna is the nicest character of the movie but it kind of bothered me that she would go with a complete stranger to look for his sister. It's one thing to have a nice character but too make her too nice to the point of stupidity is pushing it. Oh and get this, she wears pink a lot because she's a good girl. Wow, really. It even confuses me more of how she's friends with these people or dating a douche like Trent. Well, whatever, just because she's nice it doesn't mean she's less stupid. There is a twist about Jenna, however since I freakin' hate this movie, I'll tell you anyway. Jenna is set up to be the film's final girl but nope, she gets killed. There could've been a smarter way of setting this up but judging how dumb the writing is and the lack of character development, I really don't give a shit.

Whitney. Hmm....what's there to say about Whitney? She's Clay's sister. She looks like Jason's mom. She has dumbass friends and an equally dumbass boyfriend. She gets kidnaped and held hostage by Jason (what?). And finally she is this film's final girl. There is no development on this character nor any proper screen time for me to be invested in her. Fifteen to twenty minutes is all the screentime we have with her. Sad but true.

Special mention goes out to the actor who plays Whitney's Boyfriend, who seem to be a remake regular. He was last seen on Rob Zombie's Halloween, playing, of course, somebody's boyfriend. Hmm. Let's see what other crappy remake he's going to be in.

Trent. Oh dear lord, Trent. What a fucking clown. He's played by (the very sexy, I just have to say that) Travis Van Winkle, who played a similar character in one of Michael Bay's Transformers movies. Oddly, he kind of does look like a young Michael Bay. Besides the point though, the way the filmmakers  write this character is so over the top cartoonish, It's hard to take this guy seriously. And if he's just sordidly written this way just for the audience to root for his death is just ridiculous. Sure they had similar characters in the later sequels but at least there was more, let's say, thought put into them. Again, I wonder what the hell Jenna or his friends see in him, though yet again, they're idiots including Trent himself.

Better yet, he gets the most satisfying death scene. How ironic.
The rest of the characters are just caricatures just like Trent, mentioned above, So I'm going to run through them quickly:

First we have Chewie, who is the most annoying character in the movie. For some reason, certain horror fans seem to like this guy. However, he is nothing more than stereotypical stoner with some of the lamest dialogue.

Then we have his friend Lawrence. When the first time we hear his dialogue, it's a one-off joke about his race. Wow, just give it up for the Michael Bay crew. How. Fucking. Typical. He too is a run-of-the-mill stoner character, who likes to look at nude magazines. That's all.

Ryan Hansen just plays his character on Veronica Mars. That's all.

Bree and Chelsea are basically the same character. Beer-guzzling, sex-crazed bimbos.

If you look at this picture here, you can't clearly tell them apart. That's how interchangeable they are. You can see why the casting of the film was so incompetent.

There is one and I mean one good thing I could say about this movie which is how they handled Jason. He is much more faster, stronger, and indeed smarter but what puzzles me was how he was able to set up traps and secret passways but that's just the film's stupid writing, which I will rant on soon.

Anyway, Derek Mears did a good job at keeping Jason intimidating and hulking as he was in the original films.
Oh geez, the writing is atrocious. In some parts, the writers try to have the witty humor of Friday Part 6 but fail miserably. It's like I'm watching a teen sex comedy or something. Damian Shannon and Mark Swift are the same writers that wrote Freddy Vs. Jason, which is questioning why they would get on this project. The problem with them is that they focus on developing the monster instead of the characters. Sure people want to go see Jason, but the main characters are the ones that drive the story. And when you have a bunch of unlikeable, obnoxious, sex-crazed, idiotic, arrogant, repulsive assholes as your film's main characters, something is terribly wrong here. Just a little note, the people in this movie seem to be really obsessed with marijuana. And I'm not going to even mention the dialogue, it's god awful.

Boy, this will give Friday Part 5 a run for it's money because the nudity and sex scenes are way TOO much. At any given moment, half of the female cast flash their breasts at the most unnecessary of times. It soon becomes Girls Gone Wild 2.0 and the sex scenes were gearing towards softcore porn territory. Guys, I'm not a prude but this was just so inappropriate and it made me uncomfortable watching it. If you look at the Friday The 13th films (with the exception of Part 5 and 9), there was only spilt second nude scenes and the sex was at times restrained. So many horror fans demand sex and nudity in their horror films when in fact they just google porn on their computers. and once Jason impales a girl, we get one last shot of her breast before she goes underwater. Ugh. Really, are the filmmakers trying to make this distasteful. There are limits, people, try not to make your film sleazy. This is actually one of the reasons why I watched this only two times.

The death scenes are so lackluster. The filmmakers run of out ideas so much that with one character, they had to shoot her death scenes THREE TIMES before finally coming up with one: which rips off a certain death scene from Silent Night, Deadly Night. Stay classy, guys, stay classy. The only worth-mentioning is the deaths in the opening scenes and Trent's.
Ugh. I am so done here. I mean watching this crap is a waste of time. But one more note before my final rant to this atrocity:

There's the opening sequence featuring Jason's mom for a spilt second, which ends up being rehash of the ending of the first movie. The filmmakers seem to forget that Pamela Voorhees was an integral part of the series. There could've been a backstory explored here and could've add more story than your basic by-the-numbers slasher in which this piece of shit is.
Come on guys, you already know what the verdict is. Watch the original films. Or better yet, watch the first four, which this movie tries to reboot. the movies had likeable characters, neat kills, and good directing. Seriously, I wish this remake didn't exist. And therefore, the most unlucky day I had was seeing this abomination in theaters.
My Last Word: This movie should never be mentioned again. That's how bad it is.

Don't be confused by the trailer, I tried. But honestly I don't care.