Sisters Review (Film, 1972) The Archives
content warning: Sisters is a product of its time and uses the medically and culturally inaccurate terminology for conjoined twins.
Writer Grace Collier witnesses a murder in the apartment across the courtyard. Unfortunately for her, the very police force she accused of racism and corruption in her editorials refuses to conduct an actual investigation because she is the key witness. They’d rather bash her credibility and watch a murder scene get erased right in front of their eyes.
The suspects are two sisters, Danielle and Dominique. Grace sees one sister walk in with a handsome young man at night, then sees the other sister brutally stab him as he pleads for help at the window the following morning. The only choice is to investigate the murder herself and prove everything she said about the police is true.
Sisters is a whole lot of horror film going on at once. The plot I described is the one I found the most compelling and successful in Brian De Palma’s film. Danielle and Dominique also happen to be conjoined twins who were physically, but not psychologically, separated. Danielle is also maybe fighting against her ex-husband who might be stalking her. And Grace herself might not be the most reliable narrator, either.
The plot is fractured in a lot of directions to play on the conjoined twin imagery. The cover-up/police standoff is presented as a split screen event. It starts with the perspective of the murder victim. When he reaches the window, the screen splits in half, showing his view and Grace’s view. Grace calls the police, and the screen soon fractures again to show Danielle hiding the evidence while Grace argues with the police. Many secrets are hidden in plain sight by this clever device, making most of the twists and turns in the last act quite effective.
What’s less effective is the storytelling shift around that point. For most of the film, we see a cold, clinical examination of this murder case. It’s a horror film about justice and truth rather than emotion. Once the truth starts coming out, however, it switches to fantasy. That’s far less successful. There’s narration from one character split between the dreams/memories/imagination happening in Grace and Danielle’s minds. It’s an intriguing concept rendered ineffective by its abrupt introduction in the film. De Palma commits to such an objective viewpoint that the fragility of memory and dream taking over at the last minute is a bit odd.
Sisters is a clever horror film with great editing. If the ending gets a little confusing, it’s a crime of ambition. The narrative is still satisfying and the scares strong; it just concludes with a little less punch than it deserves.
