[Film Review] Sissy (2022)

This year sees the UK premiere of some incredible looking female-fronted horrors: Candyland in the vein of 70s exploitation movies exploring the underground world of truck stop sex workers; Piggy a tale of one girls revenge against her bullies; and The Harbinger which focuses on two best friends supporting each other through the horrors of the pandemic and beyond – to name but a few. 

Following its success at SXSW festival, Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes’ Sissy is one of my automatic favourites. Australian horror always has a unique blend of laughter, frights and bloody violence and Sissy was no exception. 

After a decade apart, an awkward Cecilia aka Sissy (Aisha Dee) bumps into her childhood best friend Emma (Barlow) in a grocery store, where she excitedly invites her along to her bachelorette party. Emma is marrying her fiancé Fran (Lucy Barrett) and wants Sissy to attend a luxury cabin in the woods with them to celebrate – she reluctantly agrees.

Sissy is now a social media ‘influencer’ who portrays herself as someone who practices mindfulness, and self-love. She preaches to her viewers about how to ‘breathe through’ stressful situations, whilst simultaneously selling them products that she has been paid to promote. Behind the camera though, she is your standard social-media-obsessed, validation-seeking millennial, with a messy apartment and a diet of leftover junk food.

Arriving at Emma's bachelorette weekend, Sissy is unaware that one of the other guests is her childhood rival Alex (Emily De Margheriti), who has an immediate and visceral reaction to seeing her. Suddenly we are questioning what happened to make Alex so volatile towards Sissy – surely it can’t have been too bad, otherwise Emma wouldn’t have invited her… right?

Alex agrees to put their history aside for the sake of the brides-to-be, however the tension is palpable as glimpses of their past flicker between a number of uncomfortable scenes in which Sissy is trying desperately to make everyone like her. It’s clear that no matter how obvious they make their disdain for her, and her job, she still hopes that with enough time they will see her for the has-her-shit-together persona she’s invented for herself.

Unfortunately, though, Sissy will never quite be part of the in-crowd, and when she is confronted by Alex in private for what she did when they were children, the situation gets out of hand, resulting in dire consequences. But do not assume to know what you’re getting yourself into as a viewer – this is no plotted and planned revenge film, but something far more glitter-soaked and deranged.

If you’re a fan of shows like Netflix Original You where the main character is amusingly unlikeable, and yet you still find yourself rooting for them in a demented kind of way, you’re likely to enjoy Sissy. As a viewer you can almost feel  things start to spiral out of control, and just as you think an issue will be resolved it escalates into something much, much worse. In the most fun way possible, you are left with no choice but to grit your teeth and cringe through it.

Aisha Dee gives an incredibly unhinged performance throughout, even in the moments that she is alone, or just speaking to her followers through her phone, she is captivating. She effectively portrays the effects of losing your best friend as a child, and the trauma of retaliating to being bullied – and how, in reality, it sometimes only makes things worse.

The supporting cast are less memorable, but offer some hilarious interactions and one-liners, and one particularly gross scene that involves pee – but that’s to be seen with your own eyes…

Typically Australian in its sense of humour, Sissy is an endearing, shocking and colourful disasterpiece, with a lot of its fun deriving from being able to see the horrific car crash coming up ahead.

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