Column Teen Horror Time Machine No Safety in Sisterhood: Twisted and Sorority Sister  There’s a fine line between hazing and MURDER. By Alissa Burger | Published on October 2, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share The yearning to belong is a constant theme throughout ‘90s teen horror. Characters find comfort and protection in family, friends, and romantic partners as they navigate the terrors that beset them. R.L. Stine’s Twisted (1987) and Diane Hoh’s Nightmare Hall book Sorority Sister (1994) feature young women at the start of their college journeys, who are looking for this sense of community and camaraderie in sorority life—though they discover that even within the warm embrace of these sisterhoods, they are far from safe.  Stine’s Twisted is a precursor to the larger ‘90s teen horror trend, a Point Horror book that precedes his popular Fear Street series. Abby is making the transition from high school to college and feels like she is caught between two worlds: She’s a college student but still lives at home, where she feels a bit smothered by her mother’s constant attention. She wants nothing more than to pledge Tri Gamma, the most desirable sorority on campus, but her sister Gabriella’s snarky comments about Tri Gamma and sororities in general is a sour counterpoint to Abby’s enthusiasm. And while Abby imagines that she’ll make lots of new friends through the recruitment process, two of the first people she sees are Nina, who had been her childhood best friend until they drifted apart in high school, and Leila, Abby’s high school best friend and the girl Abby’s boyfriend Gordon dumped her for, after which Abby hit a bit of an amorphously described “bad patch.”  Despite Gabriella’s negativity and the stress of being thrown into close proximity with old friends and rivals, Abby stays the course and continues with the recruitment process, even when Tri Gamma president Andrea tells them that as a bonding exercise and a test of their loyalty, “Every year, we take our pledges away from the sorority house, away from the campus, to another town. And then… to make sure you will be loyal Tri Gammas for life… we ask our pledges to commit a crime” (25, emphasis original). This extreme demand is framed as “a secret that will bind them together… an experience that will make them sisters for life” (25). Abby boards a bus with Andrea and the other recruits and they are whisked away to a sleepy off-season seaside town, put up in a creepy old house, and walked through the process of how they’re all going to commit an armed robbery of an antique store, to steal money and jewelry from the little old lady who runs it, Marie Driftwood. This is not what anyone would call a discrete operation: They park the bus on the main road outside the antique store and all tromp in together, as Andrea points out the items she wants them to steal when they come back for the real thing.  The girls are divided about whether this is a joke or the real deal. When the big moment comes, one of the girls refuses to participate, but the majority of them carry on as they head back to the antique store in broad daylight, tying Mrs. Driftwood up as they hold her at gunpoint. Everything seems to be going according to plan—or at least as according to plan as is possible with a group of poorly coordinated amateurs with no idea of what they’re doing—until Mrs. Driftwood has a heart attack and dies. The girls flee in panic, heading back to the house to debate what to do and whether they should call the police. Andrea tells them she’s going to call the cops and pin the whole thing on them; she waited outside the store as a lookout and the way she sees it, “I didn’t kill anyone… You girls went into the store. The next thing I knew, you all came running out, telling me the owner was dead” (88). It’s terrible that Mrs. Driftwood died, sure, but it’s not Andrea’s fault in any way, and the girls will just have to take responsibility for their actions. The girls feel betrayed, tempers flare, and a cooling off period is proposed to think things over before they make any big decisions. They scatter to different corners of the house, there’s a loud bang, and they find Andrea dead in her room from a gunshot. So now there are TWO murders to cover up, the bus has left them stranded at the house, and tensions between Abby and Leila continue to mount when Gordon secretly shows up at the house to see Leila, though Abby is certain that she’s the one he really wants.  Mayhem ensues, no one’s sure who they can trust, and when Abby and Leila finally have their long overdue confrontation, Abby has a gun and is telling Leila that she’s really Gabriella, there to protect her sister Abby and make Leila pay for stealing Gordon (who, to be honest, doesn’t seem like much of a prize). Gordon comes to Leila’s rescue and isn’t surprised by Abby’s behavior, telling Leila that “This is what happened to her before… This is her other personality” (150), revealing the secrets of the dark time Abby refuses to think about. Confusion ensues as Gordon tries to restrain Gabriella and Nina can’t figure out why he’s attacking Abby, and things only get crazier when Andrea and Mrs. Driftwood show up, both alive and well, revealing that the whole thing was an elaborate hazing ritual. They expect this announcement to be met with relief and laughter (as it apparently has been all the other years they’ve pulled this stunt), but Nina is outraged, telling Andrea “I’m not just disappointed that the Tri Gams would pull this stupid prank on their pledges. I’m not just hurt. I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed of the Tri Gams. I’m ashamed of myself” (162). Nina does tell Andrea that she’s not walking away, however, saying that “I’ve earned my place this weekend… I’m going to be a Tri Gam, Andrea… And the first thing I’m going to fight for is to get rid of this awful weekend you make your pledges go through every year!” (162). So after this trial by fire, Nina is headed to the Tri Gamma house, but Abby (and Gabriella) are headed somewhere much less pleasant, bundled into an ambulance and bound for another lengthy institutional stay.  The dangers come from within the sorority in Stine’s Twisted, while in Hoh’s Sorority Sister, when terrible things begin happening to the young women of Omega Phi Delta, all signs point to someone on the outside, and as the sisters draw together to protect themselves and one another. Maxie McKeon is a recent pledge and new to the house, though she really feels that she has found where she belongs, much to the chagrin of her best friend Jenna and her boyfriend Brendan. Then odd things start happening in the sorority house: Some of the girls’ valuable possessions, including a jewelry box and a ring, go missing, though both are soon returned anonymously, delivered by a messenger and with nothing missing or damaged. The point of these thefts is to let the girls know that someone is able to come and go from the house at will and undetected, which means the home they share is no longer a safe haven.  Many of the girls in the house are legacies, including Tinker Gabrielle, Erica Bingham, and Candie Barr (seriously), with mothers who were Omega Phi Deltas at Salem University during their own college careers. When the mothers come to the house for a luncheon, the event is sabotaged, as someone takes all the catered food and fills the refrigerator with rotting garbage. The catering team’s presence in the house highlights how easy it is for someone who means the girls harm to infiltrate this private space: When Maxie sees a woman she doesn’t know in the pantry, she assumes she’s with the caterers, but this isn’t the case. Later, a man claiming to be a doctor has some car trouble near the house and Maxie lets him in to use their phone, and when an exterminator shows up to do some work around the house, the girls check his identification and invite him in. Of course, neither of these people are who they claim to be and the girls suffer as a result: The “doctor” fills the pantry with ants and while the exterminator may have taken care of the ants, he also sprayed insecticide on the dinner plates, which sends several girls to the hospital. A woman claiming to be Candi’s mother’s stylist, Tia Maria, shows up to do Candie’s hair and offers to give Maxie a makeover while she waits for Candie to get home. Maxie nearly breaks her ankle trying to get away from Tia Maria when she realizes mid-makeover that this woman is not who she claims to be. The exterior of the house is being painted and the girls can’t quite decide whether the presence of the painting crew is a comfort (lots of people around, safety in numbers) or just another danger (the person who wants to hurt them could pose as and blend in with the painting crew).  While the girls’ attempts at keeping the house secure are far from effective, their assumption is that the threat is coming from outside the house, with their top suspects being pledges who were not accepted into Omega Phi Delta. As Maxie tries to balance her new sorority life with her other friends and commitments, she begins to suspect those closest to her: She and Jenna used to be roommates and she wonders if Jenna may be behind it all, in the hope that Maxie will get fed up with sorority life or be too afraid to stay in the house and move back to the dorm with her. Maxie’s boyfriend Brendan isn’t super happy about having to share her time and attention with Maxie’s new sisters either, as she keeps canceling their dates for sorority commitments and events.  But that’s not the case and in the end, the threat is one of their own: Candie resents how much the sorority means to her mother, in whose footsteps she is following in Omega Phi Delta. As Candie tells Maxie, she “Never stopped talking about it, never stopped wanting it back, never loved anything as much as she did those four years. Not my father, not my brother, not me. Especially not me” (195, emphasis original). Even as an alum, Allison Barre’s life revolves around Omega Phi Delta; she has never been around for her family and has missed all of Candie’s plays. Candie apparently crushed it in these theatre performances, because she dressed up and convincingly played all of the outsiders who got into the house, from the fake caterer to Tia Maria. Driven by this simmering resentment, Candie’s great plan is to set the sorority house on fire with all of her sisters inside, so her mother will have nothing to yearn for, go back to, or prioritize above her daughter. As she tells Maxie, “No house, no sorority. No sorority, no fixation, period. She’ll get over it. And she’ll come to me for comfort when it’s all gone” (200, emphasis original). This is a flawed plan, to say the least, and Maxie tries to explain to Candie that “Omega Phi is more than a house… What your mom wants back is in her head, in her memory, not in this house” (201, emphasis original). But Candie is so fanatical in her commitment that she can’t see reason and the equation seems straightforward to her: no house, no sorority, problem solved. Maxie keeps Candie talking, subdues her with a paint sprayer that the painters have left behind, saves her sisters, and saves the house.  In both Twisted and Sorority Sister, the camaraderie and support Abby and Maxie hope to find among their sisters turns out to be compromised and destructive. The Tri Gammas of Twisted have systemic issues, including the traumatic hazing ritual they put their new pledges through, and while Nina vows to join the house and effect change, her follow through is far from certain. Abby’s friendships with other girls, including Nina and Leila, are complicated and the division of Abby’s personality between her own and that of her “sister” Gabriella adds another layer of toxic sisterhood to Twisted, as Gabriella vacillates between ridiculing and defending Abby. While the pledges of Sorority Sister’s Omega Phi Delta don’t have to endure the hazing the Tri Gammas experience, this wasn’t always the case, and Erica’s mother was injured in a hazing incident in her own time with the sorority, when she fell off a railroad bridge and into the river: As Erica tells the other girls, “She was in a full body cast for eight weeks and didn’t graduate with her class. Had to finish up in summer school. Her accident was responsible for some new rules about hazing” (85), including changes in Omega Phi Delta’s initiation rituals. While the recruitment and rituals of Omega Phi Delta are much less problematic than those of the Tri Gammas, they do have to contend with this history and Candie’s violence against the other girls in the sorority shows that they can’t necessarily trust their sisters even now.  Interestingly, despite the horrors of Twisted and Sorority Sister, when the dust settles, the majority of the girls choose to stand with their sisters: Leila drops out of recruitment but Nina is going to be a Tri Gamma, despite—or maybe even because of—her outrage over the initiation prank. Despite her horrific injury in her own time in the house, Erica’s mother remains devoted to the sorority, returns for the luncheon with the other mothers, and is thrilled that her daughter is the chapter president. And even though Maxie was nearly killed, once Candie is in custody, she chooses to stay in the house, surrounded and comforted by the support of her sisters.[end-mark] The post No Safety in Sisterhood: <em>Twisted</em> and <em>Sorority Sister</em>  appeared first on Reactor.