Sisters is Brian De Palma’s first in a career of homages to his idol, Alfred Hitchcock. However, though thematically and cinematically similar to the master of suspense, the work exhibits what would be later dubbed as signature De Palma. Perhaps ironic in relation to what has been previously outlined is that Sisters houses a plotline that, if deprived of its opening credits, could easily be mistaken as a feminist version of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers. The fact that most of the film’s storyline can be explicated with the phrase “may or may not,” Sisters serves as a cinematic Rorschach test which gauges, much like the television program seen in the film, the moral character of the viewer as De Palma presents a visually stunning, thought-provoking masterpiece of horror.
Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) witnesses her neighbor, Danielle (Margot Kidder), murdering a man named Phillip Wood (Lisle Wilson). When the police are unable to find any evidence, Grace hires a private detective named Joseph Larch (Charles Durning). The situation becomes complicated when Grace discovers that Danielle has a Siamese twin named Dominique.
Sisters opens with a Candid Camera-esque game show called “Peeping Toms,” perhaps a wink and a sarcastic nod to Psycho as well as an homage to Michael Powell’s masterpiece. We watch (pun intended) as Danielle plays a blind girl who begins to get undressed as Phillip watches. The contestants on the show have to guess what Phillip will do. Both guess incorrectly. Then those involved are called unto the stage. During Danielle’s interview, she reveals she is an actress. The theme of fabrication is quickly carried over once Danielle’s ex-husband, Emil Brenton (William Finley), follows her and Phillip back to her apartment. Phillip exits the building, drives off in order to act as if he were leaving for the night, and returns through the back door. Later, à la Rear Window, Danielle’s neighbor, Grace, a feminist columnist, glances across the street and witnesses Phillip, bludgeoned with a butcher knife (a parting gift to Danielle from Peeping Toms), as he meekly scribbles “HELP” on the window in his own blood (our would be central character is thus killed off early in the production, i.e. Psycho). This reference is further extended when Grace is seen spying on Danielle with binoculars, L. B. Jefferies’s choice instrument for voyeurism. Shortly thereafter, we are granted the possibility of the transference of personality, thus alluding once again to Psycho as we hear Dominique argue with Danielle as Norman’s dead mother does with her son. Lastly, the film’s score was composed by none other than Bernard Herrmann.
The crux of Sisters is dependent upon ambiguity and the problem of perceived events. Grace believes she witnesses a murder, once again, deferring to Rear Window. Grace’s, as well as the viewer’s, veracity is first placed in doubt when the possibility of an unreliable narrator, that is, the manner–not in which Grace has visually perceived the events in the film–but in how the reporter has construed them in her mind (which is the viewer’s frame of reference) is called into question. We first come to suspect that what has been issued as fact may well perhaps have been filtered through Grace’s biases when she cites that the police’s apathy and reluctance to investigate Danielle’s apartment is fueled by racism in that the possible victim is a black man (after the officer indirectly comments upon the character’s lack of objectivity in her feminist columns). Yet, though we–and not Grace–saw Emil hide Phillip’s corpse in the hide-a-couch and even saw the blood seeping through the fabric atop his bruise, which is still evident on his forehead, suffered after he fell while hastily cleaning Danielle’s apartment. This is when we begin to think back to Grace inquiring and verifying, now perhaps not in an attempt to allocate evidence but in order to assure herself that she was thinking with a clear head, that a man entered a nearby bakery that morning and requested “Happy Birthday Danielle and Dominique” be written on a cake. However, the situation becomes drastically exacerbated once Grace finds Danielle’s case file, which discloses that she was once one half of the Blanchion Siamese twins, which were separated by none other than Emil. Cunningly, it is disclosed that the twins where never supposed to be severed from one another until Danielle became pregnant and her sister, Dominique, out of jealousy, threatened the unborn child. De Palma then allows the possibility that Grace is the unstable other half (implied by her title of “Margaret” once she enters Emil’s experimental center for the insane), which is justified in her feminist writings and her, now plausible, reaction to her sister’s affections from Phillip (thus making Grace the murderess, not Danielle). The report that Dominique died during the operation serves as an indicator that we have been victim to Grace’s slanted reading of the events in that Grace, if she is the unsound second half, fabricated and convinced herself of the death in order to sublimate her jealousy and guilty actions.
This is merely one interpretation (wink, wink) of the film. As I opened the review, Emil may or may not be the ex-husband and doctor to Danielle. The actress’s explanation that she has two of every outfit in her wardrobe due to her acting obligations may or may not be truthful. Grace may or may not be Dominique (or Margaret). Furthermore, Grace may or may not have witnessed a murder (she notes the murder weapon–a butcher knife–but, from her–which was ours at the time–POV, she did not see the murder take place, thus would not be able to cite the instrument of death, that is, unless she is the culprit). Even the interpretation of how the director is presenting his characters is left to polar readings: Grace may be viewed as a misogynistic construction comprised of an unstable mind suffering from a crippling inferiority complex or merely the victim of bigotry in a time of social change (the latter reinforced by the producers of Peeping Toms issuing Phillip a complimentary dinner for two at the “African Room”). Though the feel of the work is indeed reminiscent of the director’s idol, albeit on methamphetamines, Sisters is stunningly original and challenging for, if nothing else, everything becomes a potential red herring as De Palma takes his mentor’s canon to its epistemological extreme. At no point does De Palma present these ideas gratuitously in order merely to complicate matters. In respect to unstable characters and allowing form to follow function (i.e. appropriately, unlike in some of his later films, a split screen is utilized), Sisters is a precursor to such postmodern masterpieces of perception as Mary Harron’s American Psycho, David Fincher’s Fight Club, Christopher Nolan’s Memento, and David Cronenberg’s Spider. Allow me to put it this way: The closing scene, which focuses upon the only possible piece of incriminating evidence (if there is any), the couch–which has been traveling from Danielle’s apartment since shortly after the supposed murder–winds up outside an abandoned (instead of deliberately disposed of) train station in Ontario, Canada as Joseph looks curiously on . . . .
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
