When you head down the ‘80s slasher rabbit hole, it’s impossible to ignore the general formulas at play. Even the best of the horror subgenre can feel derivative, largely borrowing from only a handful of classics (Psycho, Black Christmas, Halloween, Friday the 13th). And what sets apart the winners from the losers are the little things, the chances they take, and the exact combination of tropes they do indeed choose to crib from their predecessors — and the spin they put on those tropes.
The House on Sorority Row is largely a by-the-numbers slasher. It’s set in a sorority house where the graduating seniors plan to play a prank on their curmudgeonly old house mother. Of course, the prank goes awry, leading to the accidental (kinda) murder of the old lady. Presumably for revenge, the sorority girls get sequentially picked off one-by-one by a faceless killer as we watch from their POV.
Playing out its beats often by rote, the film lets you see the kills coming a mile away and you can almost predict exactly how they will happen. Fortunately, writer-director Mark Rosman, inspired by 1955’s Les Diaboliques, uses more finesse with his stabbings and beheadings, albeit by employing some hokey special effects in the process.
Only occasionally getting away from the confines of an archetypal slasher, the filmmaker does some interesting things with the narrative, whether he’s using the entirety of the frame to build suspense or even creating hallucinogenic situations that he later utilizes to befog the audience (with full integrity still intact). One clever callback comes to mind involving a jester costume hanging on the wall. We also get a plethora of red herrings, which is forgivable simply because (SPOILER ALERT) the unmasking ultimately never comes in the end. Again, we’re not watching ‘80s slashers for originality. However, finding such moments of organic inspiration and haunting imagery is why we keep coming back to the genre.
My main complaint is with how the protagonist is written. While iconic Final Girls like Laurie Strode and Nancy Thompson begin their films in a place of youthful naivety only to have their spirits eroded with disillusionment as they watch their friends get massacred, sorority girl Katey Rose (Kathryn McNeil) opens this movie already in a sour mood. Katey is never truly unlikeable but she’s unappealingly moody from the get-go with no real justification for her relentless fussiness.
Unless it’s for the sake of counterpointing dark comedy or matching the actual darkness within a film, a protagonist shouldn’t be this gloomy. One such fusspot is Scream’s Sidney Prescott. But with some backstory about her parents and a tone that’s more satirical than anything else, we need someone like her to ground the insanity of Wes Craven’s 1996 classic. Similar to how The House on Sorority Row never massages its way into the macabre, Katey’s gravitas never feels earned either.
Featuring one of Richard Band’s finest musical scores, The House on Sorority Row is nevertheless a standout in the ‘80s horror panoply (although tonally, you can often feel the runoff of ‘70s films like Tourist Trap or Black Christmas rather than comparisons to its contemporaries). If you can make it past the shameless genre tropes, you’ll be treated to a fun, albeit flawed, cinematic experience that’s worth your time at the very least.
Twizard Rating: 79
Home Video Options
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