Loosely based on the 1983 horror cult classic The House On Sorority Row, the Stewart Hendler-directed Sorority Row — starring a cast of Hollywood beauties including The Hills’ Audriana Patridge, Step Up 2 star Briana Evigan, Jamie Chung (Dragonball), Leah Piper (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) and The House Bunny costar Rumer Willis, daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore — has a pitch-black sense of humor that could slay a new generation of horror fans.
After a seemingly harmless prank goes horribly wrong in Sorority Row and the frat sisters all agree to cover up the bloody death of one of their own, it’s not long before the girls of the Theta Pi fraternity house are gruesomely slaughtered, one-by-one. Willis claims that when it comes to contemporary big screen fright-fests, Sorority Row’s tongue-in-cheek approach to slasher/thriller-killer films elevates it into a class all its own. “What makes it so unique is that while someone is dying, someone else is making a joke about it,” Willis says. “So you’re still kind of freaked out from seeing someone die, but at the same time you start laughing at it … The intensity of the scenes get intermingled, so you never really know what you’re going to get.”
Raised far away from the bright lights of Hollywood on her family’s ranch in Idaho, Willis confesses she always felt the urge to follow in her parent’s footsteps. After small roles in Demi’s Striptease and Bruce’s Hostage, she landed a costarring role in last year’s comedy The House Bunny, which directly lead to her co-leading lady role in Sorority Row. “I don’t care how big my name is on the marquee, I just want be in films that are fun and that I can learn from — and Sorority Row fits the bill,” she admits. “It’s really scary but it also very witty.” And what do her celebrity parents think about the darkly comic thriller? “They haven’t seen it yet, but I’m sure they’ll like it, they love everything you do,” Willis explains. “Honestly, the opinion I’ll be looking is from my little sister, Tallulah, who is 15. She’s the most opinionated and brutally honest of the bunch, so if she hates it, she’ll be like ‘Ru, it was terrible, why did you do it?’ But, if she likes it, then I know it’s a good movie.”
Since you are the film’s official screamer, how long did you have to practice until you got your scream perfect?
“Honestly, not much. Do you know what? It just kind of came up one day in rehearsal. We were there in the first week and we were really starting to get into the rehearsals of that first huge scene and I just sort of screamed and then I looked at everyone and I was like ‘Oooh, hey this works okay. Woah!’”
Did your voice get hoarse?
“We were shooting nights for about three weeks and after we shot the very beginning scene, we shot that for probably like two weeks and after every night I sounded a little bit like Kathleen Turner. I didn’t mind it, mind you, but you have to be careful because you if do it too hard you’ll have no voice. You won’t be able to talk.”
Didn’t all the girls have to scream at your auditions?
“Yeah, and it was always a little bit embarrassing when you come out of the room and everyone was like, ‘Oh, that was you?’ You’re like, ‘I’m sorry.’ People are staring at me.”
Were you worried about how sexy the film was going to go?
“No, not me. There’s definitely nakedness. It’s just not me.”
What’s more fun — the funny scenes, the sexy scenes or the scary scenes?
“I like all of it. I don’t know. When I did The House Bunny, I kind of realized how much harder comedy is. You don’t think comedy is that hard. People kind of just seem to come off it so quickly. Comedic timing is hard. I mean, all of the girls, though, the timing is so quick, and fortunately I’m stressing throughout the whole movie, I just have to act like I’m having a mental breakdown. It kind of ends up being funny on accident.”
Do you think the deaths in Sorority Row are pretty gruesome?
“Yeah, they’re pretty gory and brutal. But, they’re not brutal like Hostel, where faces get ripped off. That’s a little too much for me. At one point, I got nauseous for, like, two seconds. I just froze it looked so real. When you’re reading it in the script and then you actually see it with the noise and the sound you’re just like, ‘Ooh. I don’t know about that… Okay. Alright. I’m going to keep watching.’”
How did you react while watching the film?
“It’s really good, right? Girls kicking ass! You rarely see a horror film, especially where it’s the girls are taking charge and it’s not just the men going, ‘Alright, you stay here, I’ll be back with an axe and take care of it.’”
Do you have a favourite horror film?
“I like Alien. I don’t know, movies for me that get too… like, I don’t like bugs crawling under the skin — that really creeps me out. Do you know what I just saw? It scared the crap out of me but I don’t know if I loved it, it was Haunting In Connecticut.”
What are you working on now?
“I’m working on 90210 right now, doing a recurring guest star, so that’s really good. As of right now, I’m going to be doing my third one right after this, so I don’t know how long I’ll be on it.”
Sorority Row director, Stewart Hendler, says he was amazed that given that your parents [Bruce Willis and Demi Moore] and stepdad [Ashton Kutcher] are big celebrities, you didn’t come on the sense with a sense of entitlement. How do you stay so down-to-earth?
“Honestly, I feel it’d be so exhausting to do that, to just not be kind to people. When you’re on a set just because you’re in front of the screen doesn’t make you the most important person or mean that you should be treated any differently. Everybody else there is doing something just as important as you and without them what you’re doing isn’t possible.”
Did you mom and dad stress it as well or did you learn by example?
“I think, yeah, just more watching by example. Also, I didn’t grow up in LA, I grew up in Idaho, so I wasn’t really around that kind of thing…thank God.” [Laughs]
