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SISTERS
(Review)
Dr. Philip Lacan (Stephen Rea) runs the Zurvan Clinic for the Study and Treatment of the Psychologically and Physiologically Unique. Some three years ago, he was involved in the deaths of two patients, and was indicted for conducting irresponsible procedures on children. Though he was ultimately found innocent of the crime, Village Spectator reporter Grace Collier (Chloe Sevigny) is convinced he’s up to no good at his clinic, and is rapidly crossing the border into harassment in her investigation of Lacan’s affairs.
That’s the basic premise of Douglas Buck’s Sisters, a loose remake of the 1973 Brian De Palma film. And there are certainly a number of elements in Sisters that come straight out of the De Palma psychological thriller playbook. Sadly though, for the most part, Buck’s effort comes off as a pale and limp echo of far better films of this stripe.
What makes this an even more resounding disappointment is the presence of Oscar nominees Rea and Sevigny, who seem all but detached from the narrative and their characters. And who can blame them when the script (by Buck and John Freitas) is a muddled affair at best.
We are given brief glimpses and allusions to Grace’s troubled past, but far from the deep insight we would require for the film’s climax to be narratively sound. There is also a particular moment in the film that, given the story’s outcome, becomes both illogical and impossible, as well as a separate plot point involving a television set that I’m not at all certain is even possible, given elementary physics.
All in all, there’s very little here to recommend, despite the presence of The X-Files’ Cancer Man, William B. Davis, and Everything’s Gone Green’s JR Bourne. Even Joshua’s Dallas Roberts is here, though in an ultimately thankless role.
I so wanted to like this one, what, with its Persian mythology reference in the Zurvan Clinic, as well as what could be a Cronenberg reference in Somnafree University (in The Brood, Oliver Reed’s Hal Raglan runs the Somafree Institute of Psychoplasmics; actually, even the whole name of the Zurvan Clinic sounds rather like a Cronenbergian construct), but the film itself is terribly flawed and not at all engaging.
If this was meant to aim for the heights achieved by early Cronenberg and De Palma, this misses the mark so badly.
What it has done though is make me curious to see De Palma’s original, it being one of his films I have yet to see. Maybe De Palma found the intriguing story in the premise that Buck so clearly failed to uncover here.
(Sisters OS courtesy of impawards.com; image courtesy of outnow.ch.)
(Review)
Dr. Philip Lacan (Stephen Rea) runs the Zurvan Clinic for the Study and Treatment of the Psychologically and Physiologically Unique. Some three years ago, he was involved in the deaths of two patients, and was indicted for conducting irresponsible procedures on children. Though he was ultimately found innocent of the crime, Village Spectator reporter Grace Collier (Chloe Sevigny) is convinced he’s up to no good at his clinic, and is rapidly crossing the border into harassment in her investigation of Lacan’s affairs.
That’s the basic premise of Douglas Buck’s Sisters, a loose remake of the 1973 Brian De Palma film. And there are certainly a number of elements in Sisters that come straight out of the De Palma psychological thriller playbook. Sadly though, for the most part, Buck’s effort comes off as a pale and limp echo of far better films of this stripe.
What makes this an even more resounding disappointment is the presence of Oscar nominees Rea and Sevigny, who seem all but detached from the narrative and their characters. And who can blame them when the script (by Buck and John Freitas) is a muddled affair at best.
We are given brief glimpses and allusions to Grace’s troubled past, but far from the deep insight we would require for the film’s climax to be narratively sound. There is also a particular moment in the film that, given the story’s outcome, becomes both illogical and impossible, as well as a separate plot point involving a television set that I’m not at all certain is even possible, given elementary physics.
All in all, there’s very little here to recommend, despite the presence of The X-Files’ Cancer Man, William B. Davis, and Everything’s Gone Green’s JR Bourne. Even Joshua’s Dallas Roberts is here, though in an ultimately thankless role.
I so wanted to like this one, what, with its Persian mythology reference in the Zurvan Clinic, as well as what could be a Cronenberg reference in Somnafree University (in The Brood, Oliver Reed’s Hal Raglan runs the Somafree Institute of Psychoplasmics; actually, even the whole name of the Zurvan Clinic sounds rather like a Cronenbergian construct), but the film itself is terribly flawed and not at all engaging.
If this was meant to aim for the heights achieved by early Cronenberg and De Palma, this misses the mark so badly.
What it has done though is make me curious to see De Palma’s original, it being one of his films I have yet to see. Maybe De Palma found the intriguing story in the premise that Buck so clearly failed to uncover here.
(Sisters OS courtesy of impawards.com; image courtesy of outnow.ch.)
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