Sorority, Fraternity Movies & Shows to Watch After Alabama Rush TikTok
It’s been just over a week since Bid Day at the University of Alabama capped off an internet feeding frenzy on sorority and fraternity life formally known as Bama Rush Tok. And what a rush it was.
Maybe you count yourself among those oddly comforted by #BamaRush’s swirl of Southern accents chanting in spell-like repetition: “My shirt is from the Pants Store, my shoes are from Amazon and my jewelry is normal.” Maybe this takeover of your TikTok FYP (For You Page) led to an increase in you speaking in acronyms, like FYP, and maybe you’ve also found yourself wondering just how much of fast fashion megalith Shein’s $10 billion in annual revenue comes from panhellenic purses alone.
Or maybe Rush Tok unsettled you in the way you feel unsettled anytime a mass, voyeuristic gaze is directed at a group of young women — a group who, in this case, also happened to be overwhelmingly white and blonde and thin. Which is, of course, a total coincidence at a university that didn’t move to desegregate its sororities until 2013. May we repeat: What a rush.
Either way, TikTok’s algorithm is back to recommending you dance videos that don’t involve pyramids of sorority members clapping in unison. But your appetite for Greek life content remains. These 11 movies and TV shows can help.
1. Greek
Oh, ABC Family in the late aughts. It was an era, and Greek stands out as one of its most-loved relics. A standard teen drama with its share of love triangles, plays for social power, and cheese, “Greek” follows two siblings through sorority and frat life at the fictional Cyprus-Rhodes University. With a writing team made up of half former sorority and fraternity members, its four seasons are meant to offer something both for those inside, and outside, the Greek system.
2. Scream Queens
Ryan Murphy styled his horror-comedy show as a spoof slash mashup of Halloween and Heathers, with mixed results. Following an elite sorority whose members, 20 years after a mysterious house party death, are being plucked off by a latex-clad serial killer, it’s as campy and stylized as you’d expect. It’s got an ensemble cast, too, which includes everyone from Murphy regulars Emma Roberts and Lea Michele to Nick Jonas, Ariana Grande, and the original scream queen herself, Jamie Lee Curtis.
3. Legally Blonde
Because, obviously. Though most of Legally Blonde’s action takes place after Reese’s Elle Woods leaves her Delta Nu sisters behind for Harvard Law School, Elle remains a beloved, exaggerated sorority stereotype throughout the film. (Fun fact: Remember Delta Nu’s outrage over their toilet paper switching from Charmin to generic, per Elle’s Harvard admission video? That was based on one of the writers’ experiences in her sorority days at James Madison University.)
4. House Bunny
All is well for Anna Faris’ Shelley Darlingson and life at the Playboy Mansion — until she becomes an unwanted crone at the age of 27 and has to take up residence elsewhere. Ultimately, she lands on the doorstep of a ragtag sorority made up of nerds, social outcasts, and (gasps) feminists, becoming their house mom. The screenplay is from the same team behind Legally Blonde, and expectations for silly frothiness can be set accordingly.
5. Drumline
Real-life fraternity Kappa Kappa Psi and sorority Tau Beta Sigma both feature in “Drumline,” a movie that follows Nick Cannon as a promising drummer from Harlem who’s recruited to join the marching band at a fictional HBC in Atlanta. There, he clashes with the hyper-disciplined band director. There’s rivalry. There’s romance. And there’s a whole lot of flashy musical moments.
6. The House on Sorority Row
A prank gone wrong, a dead house mother, and a subsequent string of killings that plague seven sorority sisters. All of that may seem formulaic enough now, but The House on Sorority Row, released in 1982, is considered a classic slasher movie to this day for a reason. (There’s also a 2009 remake starring Carrie Fisher, if ‘80s effects aren’t so much your speed.)
7. Animal House
It’s the movie that launched a thousand toga parties. And thus, its relevance to this list has been made known.
8. Sydney White
Released a year after her magnum opus, She’s the Man, this is still peak mid-aughts and middle-part Amanda Bynes territory. It’s also a retelling of “Snow White,” and the moviemakers aren’t exactly trying to be subtle about that. Bynes’ Sydney White arrives at college with a plan to join her late mother’s sorority, only to wind up blacklisted. Sydney is then taken in by seven dudes who live in a Tudor-style cottage (subtlety!), and together, they make a plan to reclaim student government from Greek life.
9. Black Christmas
Another solid entry in the “sorority horror” canon, members of Pi Kappa Sigma are haunted by mysterious phone calls and the disappearance of a fellow sorority sister. Released in 1974, it went on to influence everything from Halloween and When a Stranger Calls to Scream, and the movie’s storyline also includes a surprisingly progressive reference to abortion. (There's also a 2006 remake starring Michelle Trachtenberg and Mary Elizabeth Winstead AND a 2019 remake with White Lotus star Brittany O'Grady and Imogen Poots).
10. Pitch Perfect
Although the Barden Bellas, the all-female a capella group at the heart of the “Pitch Perfect” franchise, aren’t technically a sorority, a lot of major themes associated with Greek life are all here. There’s recruitment. Mixers with other a cappella groups. A candle-lit initiation. Registration fees and, in the sequel, on-campus housing. Stream this and be reminded of how absolutely impossible it was to avoid the “cup song” in 2012.
11. So Undercover
Miley Cyrus circa 2013 plays a street-smart private eye hired by the FBI to go undercover at a sorority, and what? It has a whopping 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and this writer’s suggestion is that we all go stream this masterpiece, effective immediately.
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