An innocent little girl, a young influencer, and a career girl walk into a horror movie, and the results are mixed. Let’s get right into these three.
SISSY (2022)
Single White Female meets Sleepaway Camp 2 and Sleepaway Camp 3 in the age of online influencers under the delusion that social media adoration means anything.
Cecilia, played perfectly by actress Aisha Dee, is an influencer ecstatic that she’s reaching 200,000 followers. Just when she thinks life can’t get any better, she runs into her childhood bestie Emma. Emma is having a celebration preceding her marriage to another woman and invites Cecilia to join in.
At first Cecilia is thrilled to be part of a real group of friends—a deliciously diverse group that will drive the woke haters nuts, including Asian, queer, Black, and disabled kids.
But things go downhill fast when Cecilia joins them at a home in the woods only to find that the bully that took Emma from her as a child is one of the guests.
Old emotional wounds are open as the bully goes right back to tormenting Cecilia. Eventually tensions boil over, the truth of the past comes out, and this turns into a nasty, violent, gory, campy little slasher.
I’m telling you, if you loved the Sleepaway Camp sequels, you’re going to love Sissy.
HUNTING SOULS (2022)
If it weren’t for loads of demon action in the last 30 minutes, Hunting Souls would have been a total dud.
The story is about a couple that begins to experience mysterious occurrences around their house after their daughter has an episode that lands her in the hospital.
Unfortunately, the mysterious occurrences the movie goes for include every cheap tween scream trick in the book. It’s an endless assault of the types of manipulative scare devices used in movies like The Conjuring. There are loads of scenes that go something like this—the wife acts like she senses or hears something in the house, and then the husband conveniently appears and makes her jump. It’s just constant buildups with weak scare payoffs.
Meanwhile, the husband keeps dragging us into nightmare sequences to pad the film with even more bogus scares.
Finally, the demon is revealed (good scene), and pretty soon it’s a battle to the death with this creepy creature as it tries to claim the daughter’s soul. I must admit, there’s something titillating about the moment when the father does the old “take me instead!” routine…
Despite the predictability and the average horror movie vibe, the finale is kind of sad.
RUN SWEETHEART RUN (2020)
This movie switches subgenres about three times before it reaches a conclusion. After checking it out, I noticed a review on IMDb bashing its feminist themes and claiming it portrays all men as the purveyors of evil throughout time. It’s amazing that men are so fragile they can’t handle the truth—the very reason they are cheering on the fascist move by Republican governors across the country to further whitewash history in schools. Seriously, if learning about the horrible way America has treated minorities makes you feel guilty, it says a lot about you and your attitudes towards minorities.
The film begins with a young woman being coerced into entertaining one of her boss’s clients. The evening starts out great but ends with her being assaulted (not presented on screen) and then pursued relentlessly by her assailant.
Initially the film is hard to watch simply because it explores the reality of women being victimized and then victimized again by authorities, as well as the notion that the average woman can have her life ruined by men in positions of power. I’m actually surprised that the hater reviews on IMDb didn’t also point out that it’s white men who are the root of all evil, because this film most definitely embeds themes of racial divides and white privilege into the plot as well.
Also making the first act hard for me to get through is a major focus on the main girl going through her period. It feels like one long PSA for being sure you always have an extra tampon on hand.
The odd amplification of the menstrual situation proves to be for a very good reason, which becomes clear as the flip is switched on the second act. This turns into a supernatural force horror film. Awesome. It’s my favorite segment of the movie, especially since it moves away from the disturbingly real horrors of what rape and assault victims go through.
Unfortunately, the final act falls apart for me. It’s sending a message of female empowerment, but there’s nothing allegorical about it. It’s a trip back to the 80s as this turns into The Next Karate Kid, complete with a bandanna and jean jacket. I really couldn’t take it seriously by that point, but at least it’s a much more uplifting conclusion than the first act would have us expect.
