There’s an old saying: If you can’t improve on the original, at least don’t set it on fire and dance around the ashes. ABC Family must have missed that memo in 2006, because The Initiation of Sarah isn’t just a remake—it’s a case study in how to take a pulpy cult film and scrub it down until it looks like a soggy Halloween special sponsored by bubblegum and bad lighting.
Welcome to ABC Family’s Haunted Sorority House™
You’d think the words “sorority horror remake” would promise at least some cheap thrills: blood, betrayal, maybe a demon keg party. Instead, what we get is ABC Family’s version of terror, which means most of the horror involves heavy eyeliner, light pyrotechnics, and Jennifer Tilly looking like she wandered in from a different, much better movie.
Our heroines are Sarah (Mika Boorem) and Lindsay (Summer Glau), fraternal twins who should’ve sued the scriptwriter for emotional damages. They’re college freshmen stepping into Temple Hill University, a school so generic it may as well have been generated by a software program called Campus.exe. Their mom (Morgan Fairchild, cashing her check with a knowing smile) was in a sorority called Alpha Nu, so naturally the girls want in. Too bad the house seems to run on eyeliner, catty insults, and ritual murder.
Witchcraft, but Make It ABC-Friendly
The 1978 version leaned on telekinesis, which at least has the dignity of piggybacking on Carrie’s blood-soaked coattails. This one? Full-on sorcery. Fireballs, knives of truth, eternal flames—the kind of supernatural nonsense that sounds like it was brainstormed by a group of interns passing around a copy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer cliff notes.
Sarah is “The One.” Or wait—no, Lindsay is actually The One. Because what’s scarier than sorority hazing? A screenplay that doesn’t know who its protagonist is until the third act.
Characters Who Deserved Better (or Nothing at All)
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Sarah (Mika Boorem): Wide-eyed, perpetually confused, spends the film looking like she’s waiting for someone to yell cut.
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Lindsay (Summer Glau): Gets tempted with beauty and power, which is the horror-movie equivalent of being offered a free sample at Costco. She deserves a better arc—and frankly, a better movie.
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Corrine (Joanna Garcia): Alpha Nu president and the kind of villainess who would sell her grandmother for a pair of Jimmy Choos. She’s fun in a “cable channel Mean Girls” kind of way, but terrifying? Not unless you fear bad sorority politics.
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Jennifer Tilly as Dr. Hunter: Imagine having Jennifer Tilly in your horror movie and still managing to be boring. That takes effort. She delivers her lines like she knows she’s surrounded by amateurs but figures, hey, free catering.
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Morgan Fairchild: Plays mom, dies halfway through. Honestly, the most merciful exit in the film.
Sex, Lies, and Fire Hazards
ABC Family, in its infinite wisdom, decided to include a sex scene. Yes, Sarah has sex with Finn to keep him from being sacrificed because—checks notes—virgins are required for the eternal flame. It’s less erotic thriller and more “mandatory plot coupon.” If this was meant to be shocking, it plays more like someone accidentally left a soap opera script in the Xerox machine.
Meanwhile, Lindsay is being groomed for sacrifice, but at no point does the movie stop to ask why anyone would want immortality if you have to spend it wearing Greek letters and chanting around a cauldron.
Special Effects (Or, the Real Horror)
The effects budget looks like it was borrowed from a high school drama club. Flames appear and vanish like clip art, magical knives glow like someone taped a flashlight under the prop, and the climactic Eternal Flame sequence resembles an after-school fire safety video.
When Corrine gets pushed into the Eternal Flame, it’s less “hellish death” and more “oops, she fell into the world’s most expensive tiki torch.”
The Big Problem: It’s Toothless
The worst sin isn’t that it’s cheap, or that it’s silly, or that it turned Summer Glau into a glorified sidekick. The worst sin is that it’s boring. For a movie about witches, rival sororities, and eternal damnation, it has all the suspense of a soggy Pop-Tart.
Even the so-called “dark humor” moments (accidental ankle healing, “Knife of Truth” nonsense) land with the grace of a drunk freshman falling off a float at Homecoming. The 1978 film at least had some nasty bite to it. This one? It’s filed down so far it couldn’t even scratch the surface of a marshmallow.
The Dark Humor Angle
If you squint, the whole thing is unintentionally funny.
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The idea that a sorority would sacrifice virgins in exchange for immortality sounds like a rejected South Park gag.
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Corrine pocketing an eyelash like it’s a nuclear launch code feels like a parody of witchcraft rather than the real deal.
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And every time Jennifer Tilly shows up, you can almost hear her thinking, I could be voicing Tiffany the Killer Doll right now instead of this nonsense.
The gallows humor is baked in: the cast is trapped in a movie where the scariest thing isn’t the flames or the sorority drama—it’s the fact that their careers had to crawl out of this wreck afterward.
Final Thoughts: A Horror Film Declawed
The 2006 Initiation of Sarah is what happens when you take a trashy, fun, borderline-exploitation concept and run it through the Disney Channel car wash. You lose the grit, the edge, the sense of danger—and all you’re left with is a made-for-TV bonfire that doesn’t even roast a marshmallow properly.
This could have been campy fun. Instead, it’s bland, bloodless, and about as scary as a pumpkin-scented candle from Bath & Body Works. The only initiation happening here is the audience being initiated into 90 minutes of disappointment.
Verdict: If you want witchy sorority horror, watch The Craft. If you want Summer Glau, watch Firefly. If you want Morgan Fairchild and Jennifer Tilly, watch literally anything else.
This one? Throw it into the Eternal Flame and hope it stays there.
