Brian De Palma’s Sisters is what happens when a film wants so badly to be a Hitchcock thriller that it ties itself into a cinematic pretzel and forgets to check if any of the ingredients were fresh. It has dashes of Rear Window, Psycho, and a sprinkle of Rope—and all the subtlety of a jackhammer recital at an ophthalmology clinic.
Here we’re given a premise ripe with promise: a murder witnessed across the way, a twisted tale of conjoined twins, and a plucky reporter trying to crack the case. And yet De Palma somehow takes this noir-soaked setup and steers it straight off the Staten Island Ferry into a sea of melodramatic sludge
The Setup: Voyeurism with a Side of Stupidity
The film kicks off with a Candid Camera–style prank show that segues into sex and a birthday party for a sister who’s either imaginary, dead, or homicidal. It’s all very French-Canadian, which apparently means it’s allowed to make zero narrative sense as long as someone is whispering “Dominique” offscreen and the music shrieks like a string section being stabbed.
Margot Kidder plays Danielle and Dominique with an accent that seems to migrate between provinces mid-sentence. The murder of Phillip Woode—played by Lisle Wilson, the only grounded performance in the entire film—is the catalyst for the plot, but his death serves more as a visual gimmick than anything else. It’s merely the jumping-off point for De Palma’s real passion: split screens and dream sequences that serve no story, just style points.
Grace Collier: Journalism, But Make It Paranoid
Enter Jennifer Salt’s Grace Collier, a self-righteous newspaper columnist with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the investigative finesse of a drunk mall cop. She sees the murder, calls the cops, gets ignored (because racism, the film insists), and then decides to sleuth her way into the truth.
Collier’s arc should be compelling—after all, she’s a lone woman against a corrupt system—but her choices are so boneheaded it’s hard to root for her. She brings along a private investigator who, for all his screen time, is as useful as a wet match. Their plan to uncover the murder involves casually strolling through an apartment, loudly declaring their findings, and somehow getting committed to a mental institution. This movie doesn’t so much develop tension as it misplaces it.
Danielle and Dominique: A Tale of Two Twits
What should be the film’s emotional core—the fractured psyche of Danielle, mourning the loss of her twin Dominique—is instead handled like a college freshman’s term paper on dissociative identity disorder. The psychological angle is played so broadly that even Sybil would say, “Ease up, this is getting ridiculous.”
By the third act, we’re knee-deep in surrealism, hypnosis, and hallucinations. The script abandons coherence in favor of moody black-and-white flashbacks and long, lingering stares at surgery tables and shadowy corridors. It wants you to be disturbed—but you’re more likely to be confused, or worse, bored.
And just in case things weren’t already unhinged, De Palma throws in Emil (William Finley), the ex-husband/doctor/hypnotist/creep who enables every one of Danielle’s breakdowns while kissing her like a Bond villain gone to seed. His fate is well-earned and completely overdue.
De Palma’s Overdose of Hitchcock
The most frustrating thing about Sisters is that De Palma is clearly capable of crafting suspense. There are moments—fleeting ones—of real tension and clever direction. But those are buried beneath a mountain of technical showmanship. The film is obsessed with being clever rather than being good. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a magician explaining every trick before performing them badly anyway.
We get it, Brian. You love Hitchcock. But loving Hitchcock isn’t the same as understanding him. Sisters tries so hard to be Psycho and Rear Window at the same time that it forgets the glue holding those films together: restraint, focus, and psychological insight. Instead, we get twin trauma and an orgy of split-screens, bizarre editing, and increasingly idiotic plot points.
The Verdict: Cult Film or Cult of Bad Taste?
Yes, Sisters has its fans. Yes, it’s become a cult classic. But let’s not confuse “cult” with “quality.” There’s a reason this one didn’t win any awards—it’s the cinematic equivalent of a pretzel tied around a landmine: twisted, explosive, and impossible to digest.
It plays like the fever dream of a grad student who skimmed a psychology textbook and said, “What if the id had a knife and a French accent?” The result is a disjointed, jittery, and hollow psychological horror film that mistakes confusion for depth.
Final Grade: D+
Give it points for ambition, a few for Bernard Herrmann’s screeching score, and one pity point for Margot Kidder’s commitment. But this is no Hitchcock homage—it’s a clumsy impersonation in a rubber mask, stabbing wildly in the dark.
