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| Georgie Henley (left) and Abigail Breslin in "Perfect Sisters." |
Fed up with lousy parenting by their alcoholic mother, two
teenagers hatch a brazen but cockamamie plan to commit matricide in “Perfect
Sisters,” a stunningly bad offering from director Stan Brooks and screenwriters
Fab Filippo and Adam Till.
The two sisters are Sandra (Abigail Breslin) and Beth
(Georgie Henley), both high school students receiving good grades and with
seemingly bright futures. But the family is perpetually behind on rent payments
and repeatedly forced to pack up and move thanks to the chronically inebriated,
frequently unemployed single mom played by Mira Sorvino. To make matters worse,
she begins dating a new guy who turns out to be a creepy, violent sex-predator
who targets Beth, leading to unnecessary scenes of increasing misogyny and unpleasantness.
Frustration boils over into madness for the young girls,
who eventually reason that the only way to escape their domestic maelstrom is
to kill mom (apparently overlooking the fact that they are both sixteen and
free to leave). The crime, not surprisingly, turns out to be the easy part, but
covering up is tricky—especially when they tell their friends everything and
leave a trail of evidence on various electronic devices. Texting and murder,
like driving, doesn’t mix.
The movie is a mess, never settling on whether it wants
to be a dark comedy or serious crime drama. The shaky, uneven tone results in
chortles of derisive laughter when the film tries to play it straight, and
eye-rolling moans of disbelief when it aims for comedy. Direction is pitched at
desperate, MTV-level crass—unmotivated camera movements, jagged cuts and pretentious
split-screens—and the performances are a brutal strain for conviction
throughout. Done with a sure hand, say David Lynch or the Coens, and there
might have been something.
Believe it or not, the whole thing is based on a true story out of Canada (the picture was filmed in Manitoba), proving that just because something is fact-based doesn’t automatically mean it’s worthy of being turned into a movie.
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