Summary
A unique and wickedly fun exploration of both bullying and influencer culture, told through the unique horror lens and dark humour of the Antipodes.
It’s been a few years since filmmakers Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes last collaborated on their feature For Now, a film about some twentysomethings travelling across California to find themselves. For their follow-up SISSY, they return to their native Australia for a unique horror-comedy filled with characters that you could find in all of our shared pasts.
Cecilia (Aisha Dee) has long since moved past her childhood nickname of Sissy, finding success as a social media influencer (called @sincerelyceclia) and her new age self-affirmation positivity. Yet all of this hides her crippling anxiety, and feelings that come to the fore when her ex-childhood best friend (Barlow) invites her away for a bachelorette weekend.
Tension mounts when Cecilia is confronted with her childhood bully Alex (Emily De Margheriti), who is physically and emotionally scarred from an incident Cecilia had long since buried. Stuck in a remote cabin in the bush, it isn’t long before someone acts — and things just start cascading from there.
SISSY is not the first film to examine the gap between social media image and the reality that sits behind it, and nor is it the first to do so through the lens of the horror genre. Matt Spicer’s Ingrid Goes West, for example, is a great dissection of the lengths people go to be liked in a social world, yet stopped short of actual psychotic violence. So, from the contrast of the super clean, bright pink opening of Cecilia’s videos — ones that hide an apartment in shambles and a life lived on the edges of breaking — it’s clear that Barlow and Senes have a unique point of view and a wickedly dark sense of humour.
While much of the first half of the film deal with the social awkwardness of bringing these former friends together, it doesn’t take long before some more traditional horror and thriller cues take place. Hints come early that Cecilia’s state of mind is haunted by some past trauma that lurks on her periphery, and her repeated mantra of “I am special” and “It’s not my fault” speak to a denial of another self. Genre fans can rest assured that it all builds to the requisite amount of bloodshed and gore one has come to expect from people visiting cabins in the woods, but the path there may not be an expected one.
Dee, known to international audiences from her role in The Bold Type series, is terrific in a role that constantly asks us to change our allegiances. If you react against her influencer positivity at the start, you may find yourself still siding with Cecilia when Alex attacks her for being ephemeral. As the chaos begins, I found that I was constantly cheering her on while watching aghast at her actions in equal measure.
Even when SISSY falls back on some familiar thriller tropes, it never completely loses sight of satire. Barlow and Senes have tapped into that part of us that loves to hate, or perhaps hates to love, the pressures of social media while crafting a solid thriller that touches on the legacy of bullying. Not to mention some wonderfully gory revenge moments to boot.
2022 | Australia | DIRECTOR: Hannah Barlow, Kane Senes | WRITERS: Hannah Barlow, Kane Senes | CAST: Aisha Dee, Hannah Barlow, Emily De Margheriti, Daniel Monks, Yerin Ha, Lucy Barrett, Shaun Martindale, Amelia Lule, April Blasdall, Camille Cumpston | DISTRIBUTOR: Arcadia, SXSW 2022 | RUNNING TIME: 102 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 11-20 March 2022 (SXSW)
