Sisters

Early Brian de Palma is trashy Brian de Palma, but also talented Brian de Palma.

So much of what he’s made through his career is suffused with his love of Alfred Hitchcock to the point that while he not only uses Bernard Hermann, it sounds like de Palma told him to write musical scores that would fit snuggly into a Hitchcock movie.

The movie hinges on two major things. The first is its plot and the ultimate twist, which I guessed way too early, and the second is the pair of performances from Jennifer Salt and Margot Kidder, which are both quite good.

The predictable plot, I don’t think, isn’t the movie’s fault. The movie starts with an extended sequence as we watch a young black man on a game show as he hits a model hired by the show. They have dinner, seem to like each other, and go to her apartment on Staten Island, Throughout the night, they are tailed by an odd looking man who says that he’s the woman’s ex-husband. After a night of frivolity, the man tries to act nice and buys her a cake for her birthday. When he returns, he’s stabbed in the face and murdered. A woman across the street sees the man’s final moments through the window and calls the police.

As the movie keeps going, we find out about the model’s twin, hints of mental illness, and the eventual reveal that they were conjoined twins. The plot itself, which, as I said, I saw coming way too early, is still a bunch of fun. It’s twisty and turny that did have me second guessing my conclusion (though I did end up being right in the end). It’s the sort of thing that Hitchcock might have done if he had a bit less concern for decorum.

Those central two performances, though, are really what carry the movie through the insanity. Margot Kidder, as the French-Canadian model, exudes a sweetness that sells her half of the equation, but it’s really Jennifer Salt’s dogged determinism in the face of universal unbelief at what she saw that provides a great hook into the story. We want to know more, but she’s the only one who can take us further into it. The police have every reason to not believe her based on her articles about police brutality that would bias them against her, and the Psycho-like cleanup o the body in question.

There’s a dream sequence late in the film that represents one great little bundle of horror as questions of reality get turned on their heads.

Perhaps the movie is a bit shallow and more of a mere good time at the movies than it could be (focusing more on the model might have helped), but it’s still quite fun, in its own trashy sort of way.

Netflix Rating: 4/5

Quality Rating: 3/4