SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE II

CONTAINS A FEW SPOILERS, IF YOU THINK THAT MATTERS

On a scale of nought to ten, exactly how surprising is it that a film called Sorority House Massacre II isn't the greatest assemblage of celluloid to ever get slung through a projector? It's barely registering at all on my personal Richter Scale of Astonishment: you'll be telling me next that cheese sandwiches have cheese in them. It's surprisingly difficult to cobble together any kind of vaguely semi-interesting review of a film which you have literally seen a hundred times before, and the occasional knowing wink to how lame and uninspired the movie is doesn't really give you anything to work with. Unrelated to the first Sorority House Massacre (a more or less passable though forgettable entry in the direct-to-video teenslash subgenre), it's just flatly rehashing ideas from scores of earlier films, so maybe I should just cut and paste from old reviews of Blood Rage, Offerings, Slaughterhouse, Night Screams, Graduation Day....

Five annoyingly perky college girls buy up an old ruin to renovate and convert into a sorority house. They got the place cheap because (cue flashbacks and exposition from the creepy neighbour) five years ago the owner went on an axe rampage, and it's stood empty ever since. Having found a ouija board, they decide (at night, on the site of a massacre, during a storm) to hold a midnight seance and call up the spirit of the killer, because of course you do. Frankly this indicates a level of staggering idiocy you'd be shocked to find in a banana, or more likely a level of sheer bloodless laziness from a screenwriter who literally cannot be bothered. Did I mention that the girls all have a topless scene, and they spend the last two thirds of the movie running around in their underwear?

Meanwhile a hardboiled cop with nothing better to do (like, you know, solving crimes) decides to go and interview the sole survivor of the five years ago, and she works as a stripper, because of course she does. Remember, we haven't seen any norks for at least eight minutes now and it's absolutely vital to the narrative that we watch her entire performance as well as half of the next one (a brief appearance by the late porn star Savannah). Yes, dear, they're very nice, now put them away. Back at the spooky old mansion, the girlies are being picked off one by one....

The first kill moment is actually quite decently done, because at that point we're not sure what to expect: ghost, possession, or homicidal maniac creepy neighbour. But that's it. The rest of the film is just counting out the five idiots running around in their skimpies and screaming. Honestly, it's like feminism never happened. It's entirely bland, entirely unsurprising, and indifferently put together by people who don't care that much about quality, aimed at an audience who don't care that much about quality either. So long as we get to watch some young women in their pants. Your auteur is Jim (Scream Queen Hot Tub Party) Wynorski, who wrote and shot it in seven days. It shows.

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