Based on the original screenplay, Seven Sisters, which spawned the 1983 horror flick The House on Sorority Row, the re-imagined Sorority Row is a modern tale of revenge that uses humor to create a fresh take on terror that is uniquely its own.

With a resume of top commercial work, including groundbreaking advertising spots for Budweiser, BMW and MTV, Hendler was attracted to the character development in the script, that helps audiences get to know each of the girls before killing them off. While doing interviews during the press day, the USC graduate, who had previously directed the feature film Whisper in 2007, told IESB about what it was like to do a horror film in a creepy meat-packing plant that was substituting for a studio in Pittsburgh.

Q: How did you get this job?

Stewart: I just got sent the script from my agents, and read it and loved it. I went to the studio and said, "This could either be torture porn, like a boobs and blood kind of thing, or it could be Mean Girls meets Scream. If you do that, then I'm totally interested." And, they said, "Yeah, that's the movie we want to make too."

Q: The gore factor was great, as well as the level of nudity. Was that ever an issue, in making this film?

Stewart: No, it was kind of the opposite. We were making an R-rated movie and the pressure was in the other direction, to throw in as much violence and nudity as we could. So, I think the challenge was how to do it in a way that is organic, with the story, as opposed to, "Oh, there's boobs, just for the sake of boobs." We wanted to deliver, but I didn't want to make a movie that was exploitative, in any way. At least it should be equal opportunity. There are naked guys running around too.

Q: The casting for this is so perfect and so diverse. Can you talk a little bit about the casting process, and how you decided on the actresses for each of these characters?

Stewart: We started with Briana, who is obviously the lead. She came off Step Up 2, where she plays this really strong, street-like tomboy girl, so I could see her doing these action scenes at the end, really well, when we would get her sweaty and dirty, and have her swinging stuff around and beating up killers. But, the first conversation we had was, "Can you imagine yourself in a sorority?," and she was down. She was like, "I know I've got to girl it up, to fit into this clan." I think it worked out, in a really nice way. She starts out as the outsider, but you can see she is actually the moral compass in the movie.

Then, Rumer came in for Ellie, and I thought she did a great job with it. I had all kinds of preconceptions before meeting her, but she turned out to be the most grounded, sweet, hard-working person I have ever seen. She carried her chair around the set. She was like, "I've got it. I'll carry it," and I said, "Sweetie there are people for that."

Q: What kind of preconceptions did you have about her?

Stewart: She obviously comes from movie royalty. There's all this stuff about young Hollywood in the tabloids, and I wasn't sure if she was part of that world or not. But, she isn't. She was like, "I want to pursue acting for the sake of pursuing acting." She had interned for two years with her management company, sorting mail, and she worked retail. She didn't have the entitlement she could have had. She cares very much to make sure people see that she is in it for the right reasons, which I think is really admirable.

Q: What about the other girls?

Stewart: Jamie Chung is just stunningly beautiful and you can't shoot her wrong, which is delightful. She is also a sweetheart.

Leah Pipes was the find of the movie. The other girls had done a movie or a TV show. She'd done a couple of things, but not nearly as much. We originally brought her in for Ellie, and she did a great job. Then, we brought her in for another role, and she did a great job. We were still putting the pieces together and Jessica was open, but the studio was trying to find a bigger person for that role. I said, "Let's bring her in and see how she does," and she did awesome. I told the studio, "You don't know her, but you will. She just nailed this and you have to put her in the movie." And, they said, "Okay."

Q: She is almost the comic relief of the film. Did you need that character to break the tension?

Stewart: Totally. That is what I originally liked about the script. I hadn't seen the original movie, but the title read like it would be a B-grade horror movie. I read the first five pages and I realized it was caustic and had this fun sense of humor to it. It was a send-up and a celebration of sorority culture, which it had to be to survive. So, Leah became the anchor of that sense of humor. I think she did a great job of being the prototypical mega-bitch.

Q: Did you go back and watch the original movie at all, before you went into production?

Stewart: It was not similar at all. I know Mark Rosman, the director. He's a producer on this, and a really great guy. He was very nice in giving me license in saying, "Make your own movie." The movie is kitchy and culty. It's one of those goofy, low-budget ‘80's movies, and it is really fun. It's got a cult following, but it's not an icon of ‘80's horror that needed to be preserved or protected. I think by veering away from that, and letting it be its own thing, we could be our own thing. The notion of the story is the same. The notion of a prank gone wrong is the same. But, that's pretty much it.

Q: How did the other girls first react to Rumer?

Stewart: They were all pros. With the exception of Leah, they have been around the block, at least once, and all have their own experience of being in major movies or being semi-famous. They came in and just wanted to do a good job. I don't think people judged Rumer and, if they did, she would quickly disregard it. It is very evident she is there to work.

Q: Since you have her screaming for the entire film, did you have to send her to scream boot camp?

Stewart: Not at all. She's got a natural talent. The first time, in rehearsals, she started screaming and we all just stopped. I think she had a good time with it.

Q: How did you end up casting Carrie Fisher, as the house mother?

Stewart: Carrie was at the top of the list for that role, but I frankly didn't think she would do it. And then, she read the script and thought it was funny. I was basically told, "If she likes you, she'll do the movie," which horrified me. So, she came in and we got along really well. She's got a really dark sense of humor. If you have read her books, you'd know. She walked out of the meeting and said, "I'll do it," and by the end of the movie, we were making fun of each other.

Q: What was the biggest challenge in doing this?

Stewart: The group dynamics thing turned out better than I thought it would be. I was certainly nervous. Taking six gorgeous, 19- to 22-year-old girls and lock them on a set together, I presumed there would be more drama than there was, but there was very, very little. The girls got along famously. They were all troopers and hard workers. They had dinner together, every night.

Q: You brought them in early to get to know each other?

Stewart: We were really lucky because we made the movie very fast. We had six weeks of prep and shot in 35 days, which was pretty quick. We managed to scrape out a week of getting them out to Pittsburgh to do rehearsals.

Q: How did you get that sense of sorority?

Stewart: A couple of ways. My mom was in a sorority. I read the script and said, "Look, this is a bit absurd. You were in a sorority. This is about how these girls kill their sister by accident. It is a little over the top." And, she was like, "Oh, my God! In the four years I was in college, two people died in Greek hazing accidents. Two people were killed accidentally -- one in a fraternity, one in a sorority." She told me both stories, and they were just as horrific. So, I thought, "Okay, maybe it's not so far off base."

Then, the writer went to USC and met a couple of sorority girls, who took us under their wing and gave us the grand tour. We sat down for hours and they told us what they did. The movie doesn't do everything literally, but it definitely starts from a place of reality and gets exaggerated from there.

Q: Why did you shoot in Pittsburgh?

Stewart: Tax incentives. No, it was because it's beautiful.

Q: Did anything scary or weird happen on set?

Stewart: We were shooting in an abandoned meat-packing plant, which was the creepiest. They could have made a movie about the place where we were shooting because it was this sprawling, old factory with dark rooms and corridors. It really looked like something out of its own horror movie. The fact that it had no heat was probably the scariest thing for us. But, it was actually a real fun set to be on. It was a real good atmosphere. People were having a good time.

Q: You built the sets inside of a meat-packing plant?

Stewart: Exactly. We were inside this giant warehouse, where we built the sets. Basically, we used it as a soundstage because Pittsburgh doesn't have any soundstages.

Q: In these types of movies, does it matter if the story doesn't hold together?

Stewart: I think there is a legacy of these movies riding the line of absurdity. We wanted to own that a little bit. We did try to acknowledge to the audience that we knew how crazy some of this stuff was. You should just go along for the ride. Jamie Chung walks off into the dark with a flare gun and says, "I'm cool." It's just that ridiculous. We wanted to come off a little bit funny, in its absurdity, and people seem to laugh in the right ways, at just those right moments.

Q: What do you think the reaction will be to Audrina being killed off in the first 10 minutes?

Stewart: She was such a good sport. There's a dark fun about killing a reality star, and she was just as aware of that as everyone else. We sat down and had coffee and I said, "Do you want to do this? It will be like Drew Barrymore in Scream, when nobody expected her to die." She has a lot of fame from the show. People love her, and people hate her. I don't think there is anything to hate about her, after meeting her. But, she comes with a lot of notoriety, and killing her right off was a funny thing to do.

Q: What are your favorite horror films?

Stewart: I love all the movies from the ‘80's, like the original Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. I think those movies had a great sense of humor and were also aware of their own absurdity. And then, there was a resurgence in the ‘90's. I really loved Scream. I love the movies that make you scared, in a good way, and that let you have a safe experience of fear. I'm not a big fan of the movies that are really graphic and gory, just for the sake of it, and that take themselves very seriously. I wanted to bring back that fun-scary.

Q: What scares you?

Stewart: Nothing scares me. I don't know. I hate spiders. I scream like a 4-year-old girl, when I see spiders. I don't have a paranoid personality. After making a horror movie, you get desensitized to it. I have super-sweet, docile parents and they were like, "What a great kill sweetie!"

Q: How happy are you with the fact that you just never know who the bad guy is until the reveal?

Stewart: That's good. That's what we are trying to do. I think audiences are really smart today, so it is less about hiding who it is and making it that everybody could be the killer. You have to make everybody suspicious, as opposed to nobody being suspicious, and I think the writers did a pretty good job. People have been like, "I thought it was Ellie for five minutes. Then, I thought it was this person."

When you reveal the person at the end, hopefully you have it be someone understandable, even though you have spent all of the movie hiding their motives. You have to have it at least be swallow-able that they did what they did. I think the final monologue is trying to have fun with that, too. This person is anti-Greek and anti-sorority values and what it stands for, which is a ludicrous thing. They say, "Your reputation comes from the company you keep, and the company keep are bitches."

Q: You left this film open-ended. Would you like to make a sequel?

Stewart: We will see. The writers and I had a great time working together. If the opportunity comes around, we would certainly love to talk about it. You have to leave it open. That's one of the rules.

SORORITY ROW opens on September 11th

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