After a decade, teen best friends Cecilia and Emma run into each other. Cecilia is invited on Emma’s bachelorette weekend, where she gets stuck in a remote cabin with her high school bully with a taste for revenge.
It’s been a while since a film said something deeply unsettling about our society in a thoroughly entertaining manner. At least for this writer, it’s been a time since a movie came along so bold, utterly confident, brutally violent, and yet somehow so whimsical and charming – not to mention touching. Thank goodness for Australia. Thank goodness for “Sissy.”
Our relationship with the internet has reached dangerous levels of toxicity. It’s no longer a discussion we need to have; it’s a fact of life. There’s not a person reading this who hasn’t in some way been negatively affected by using it. Sissy or Cecelia (Aisha Dee) would disagree. She’s an influencer – a word spellcheck insists I correct – recording wellness exercises for strangers and promoting various health products. After running into her childhood friend Emma (co-director Hannah Barlow), she’s suddenly invited to her bachelorette weekend at a remote cabin. Upon arriving, Sissy learns that her former nemesis is also in attendance, and her “wellness” persona starts to slip.
It’s a fairly standard slasher movie set-up. As the kills start, there’s even a familiar feeling to “Sissy” ’s amusing unwitting slasher routine – shades of “Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil.” She doesn’t mean to kill the other guests; it just keeps happening. But “Sissy” is meaner than that, demonstrated by both the masterful practical special effects work by Larry Van Duynhoven. It’s also more intelligent, never playing the brutality for laughs but impact.
“Sissy” is rightfully angry about the past, steeped in some of the worst of mid-aughts pop culture – an era that included not only a financial collapse and an illegal war but also let Harvey Weinstein and others reign over Hollywood. Throughout the first half, the worst of what we’d instead not be reminded of – facile reality television and news reports from what feels like end times – is repeatedly thrown in our faces. Perhaps most disturbing is that “Sissy” is not a period piece. The reports are still coming in. Nostalgia for a genuinely despicable period might be the real culprit.
Nostalgia certainly doesn’t have to look ugly, though, and husband-and-wife directors Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes have made a genuinely great-looking horror film with a playful score by Kenneth Lampl.
Nevertheless, “Sissy” refuses to put any moral judgment on its characters. This is partly thanks to some truly marvelous performances from Dee and Barlow, who make their parts feel lived in. There’s not much to empathize with on the side of most victims; they’re introduced talking over each other during a reality television binge and are not likable. They’ve avatars – and when avatars attack, Sissy defends. Finally, “Sissy” entirely saves its most chilling indictment for another party. It’s easily the best horror film of the year thus far, and it’s doubtful anything will top it.
“Sissy” recently had its Canadian Premiere at the 2022 Fantasia International Film Festival
