Let me start by saying how much I appreciate the fact that this movie resisted the urge to call itself Sorority Sista Slaughta. And it’s always nice to see a horror movie directed by a woman (in this case, Susan Hippen). Now that those kudos are out of the way, I shall commence detailing how terrible everything else about it is.
Watching the tsunami of ineptitude that is Sorority Sister Slaughter gave me Vietnam flashbacks to epic stink-fests like Ax ‘Em and The Black Witch Project. Yes, it’s THAT bad. To be fair, the acting is a notch above those films, but it’s hard to tell because Sorority Sister Slaughter has the WORST. SOUND. EVER. Entire conversations are either drowned out by the musical score or are just completely muted. Not that there’s anything worth listening to in this standard haunted house tale — “based on a true story” — of a pregnant 1950s sorority sista named Dahlia Walker who’s so distraught over being rejected by her boyfriend that she kills herself by jamming a sewing needle up her…person.
Fast-forward to the present day, and a new black sorority moves in, showing off their short shorts and mumbling a lot. The wafer-thin characters are pretty much interchangeable (one is played by Maia Campbell of In the House and bat-shit insanity fame); Tessa ends up being the heroine because, well, she’s the only one who doesn’t die. One girl — does it matter who? — finds Dahlia’s ring that her boyfriend gave her, and before you know it, her ghost appears, seemingly bringing a fog machine from beyond the grave. Dahlia proceeds to bump off everyone — including a few dumb jocks who sneak into the house — using all manner of ridiculous items: a sorority paddle, a cheerleading trophy, a basketball and what appears to be a cantaloupe of some sort.
Every technical aspect of Sorority Sister Slaughter must’ve been overseen by a team of blind gerbils. The lighting is awful. Scenes are edited randomly, with cuts that are out of order and incongruous. Some scenes pop up for literally A SECOND before we cut to something else. The film quality is grainy at best and at worst, feels like a copy of a copy a VHS of a public access TV show. The “corpses” blink. In one scene, as Dahlia chases Tessa, she runs through the same hallway over and over as Tessa’s scream is looped and replayed ad nauseum.
The more I think about it, the more it feels like the filmmakers found the remnants of an aborted movie and decided to fill in the holes. They couldn’t save some of the sound, so they tried to patch it with obnoxious music. They couldn’t make logical jumps between the scenes, so they spliced it together as best they could. Some of the video was so worn that they shot new (slightly crisper) footage to fill the holes. At least, that’s the story they should tell people, because this final product is about as entertaining and cohesive as diarrhea. On the bright side, it does eventually end.
