Review of Sisters (1973) by Todd J — 04 Mar 2008

Sisters isn't the most consistent film. Starts off as horror, then murder mystery, then a nightmarish psychological trip. The Hitchcock and Polanski influences seemed to have taken most of the spotlight with the narrative structure resembling "Psycho" and the third act "Rosemary's Baby". The idea of voyeurism only really exists on a technical level. The ideas are there but aren't developed intellectually. Bernard Herrman's score is pretty good but too Herrman, if you get me. It's as if he was writing his own songs for a film. It sticks out a bit too much. Margot Kidder turns in decent performance as a mentally disturbed siamese twin, but her French-Canadian accent is annoying.

While the first third was interesting and featured a very brutal mouth slashing, nothing that film started with was treated with enough importance and all the changes the film goes through doesn't leave the audience with much to hold on too. I also don't buy the hospital scene with Jennifer Salt's character Grace Collier where the antagonist convinces a hospital employee she is a new inmate. Salt is damn cute though.

The opening credit sequence was really cool, with it's images of an early stage fetus. The way it is lit and Herrman's score make it very ominous. The storytelling used by the split-screen technique is very interesting as well.

Maybe when it came out it was a shocker, but since then other people have made better flowing films.