The simple fact that at least four movies released last year alone carrying the title Influencer underlines that social media fame and fortune is destined to be a goldmine for filmmakers telling stories for some time to come, but it’s debatable as to whether or not any of them will be quite as harrowing as Sissy.
Backed by an incredible Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of 96 percent, co-writers and directors Hannah Barlow and Kane Senses scratched and clawed beneath the surface of a culture that’s already proven itself to be as essential to one demographic as it is nauseating to another, all bolstered by a tour-to-force performance from Aisha Dee in the lead role.
Dee’s Cecilia runs into her old high school best friend Emma (as played by Barlow) for the first time in a decade, and their re-connection swiftly leads to an invite to the latter’s bachelorette party at a remote cabin. Of course, things aren’t quite as lovey-dovey as the first seem, leading the former to begin hatching a plot for revenge now she’s stuck in the middle of nowhere with the people who made her life misery during high school.
Smart, acerbic, savage, and drenched head-to-toe in buckets of blood, Sissy immediately gained cult favorite status among horror aficionados, and that status won’t be going away anytime soon. Even now, the Shudder exclusive has migrated to an entirely different streaming service and cracked the most-watched charts, with FlixPatrol outing the scathing tale of obsessive retribution as one of the top-viewed features on Paramount Plus.