If you follow any of the stars of Vanderpump Rules on Instagram, you’ll notice that Lala Kent’s new movie came out. It’s called The Row, and was released July 27th on iTunes and very few theaters. I first heard about this movie while listening to a podcast Lala was on. She said they decided to make her the star of the movie halfway through production. Sounds totally legit and not at all like someone dropped out. I’ll be honest and say I wasn’t expecting this sorority horror movie to be good. I was hoping it would at least be fun (it wasn’t). It required the same number of drinks as The Bachelorette to get through, so don’t see it in theaters. Be like me and rent it on iTunes with a bottle of vodka nearby. Or just read this recap instead.*
*Obviously, all of this contains spoilers.
The movie opens with some very extra EDM music and strobe light effects interspersed with hot women partying. This both makes me nauseous and sets a very accurate tone for the rest of the movie. Lala, a 28 year-old woman freshman in college, is being dropped off on campus by her muscular bald dad. I Googled her dad to see if he was older than Lala’s boyfriend (sorry!) and his name is Randy Couture. You’re welcome. Randy Couture turns out to be a detective, and immediately busts a meth lab. The lab is run by exclusively Victoria’s Secret models in bras and he kills one. This will have almost no bearing on the rest of the movie.
What the slutty meth lab does prepare us for is twofold. 1) Every woman cast in this movie looks like a lingerie model. 2) The women will rarely wear more than lingerie.
Back on campus, Lala’s friend talks about how much she likes sleeping with professors. They decide to rush the “Victoria’s Secret sorority” (told you this movie had a theme), Lambda Phi, where it turns out Lala’s mother was president. Gasp. Lala is shocked, because her mother died when she was a kid and Muscle Dad doesn’t open up much. Lala, who has spent the first half hour of this movie wearing knee-length dresses and refusing alcohol, reacts to this news by getting sh*tfaced. In case we forgot this was a horror movie amidst all the underage drinking and lingerie, one of the sorority girls is violently stabbed to death outside in lingerie and a robe.
TBH, I kind of expected this stabbing to have more of an effect on everyone. The police force literally says “this won’t be the last,” which like…is it not your job to stop it? The Lambda Phi girls take molly “for Isabel” (the dead girl), which makes me very sad for the state of female friendship in this movie. Lala is driven home by a stalker valet who tells her his sister was in Lambda Phi. Another girl is stabbed to death in hot pink lingerie.
Every girl in this movie five seconds before being murdered:
The rest of this movie pretty much drifts away with more of the same. Detective Dad struggles with case-solving and opening up emotionally to his daughter. Valet Guy shows up everywhere Lala goes without her questioning it. The Lambda Phi house mother, who very clearly wants to bang Detective Dad, tells Lala that her mom hazed a girl so badly she killed herself while she was Lambda Phi president. Lala is super upset with Detective Dad for not telling her this, which is very legit but also couldn’t she have Googled this information? Two more girls are stabbed in the shower without any significant leads on the murderer. It honestly does not seem like the police are interested in this case.
I won’t tell you who the murderer is, because I think that knowledge should be saved for those of us who actually had to suffer through watch this. I can tell you that there are plenty of suspects, because every guy who hits on Lala in this movie has the facial hair and demeanor of someone who murders for sport. If you’re wondering about the acting range Lala displays in the movie, she bounces solidly between “Lala trying not to get in trouble with Lisa” to “Lala drunkenly yelling at a party.” She laughs, she cries, she only wears a bikini once—which makes her 600x more clothed than the rest of the female cast—and she manages to refrain from calling her detective dad “Daddy.”
Mostly, this movie is 87 minutes of frat parties interspersed with bodies being hacked up, with lots of gratuitous nudity. If you want a reason to feel bad about your summer body, this movie will do the trick. But while it at least delivers on the promised “hot people partying” premise, the dialogue and soundtrack are honestly so bad that it’s not worth blowing a Sunday afternoon on. Lala should maybe stick to reality TV where she can be her hilarious self, not star in someone’s first shot at a legit movie after a long career in porn. I’m not saying that describes The Row’s director, I’m just saying that’s really what it felt like.
Images: Giphy (3)
