‘Sissy’ Directors Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes Ask, What Genuinely Terrifies Millennials? [SXSW Interview]

The hotly-anticipated Australian slasher Sissy will have its World Premiere tonight at the ongoing SXSW Film Festival.

Written and directed by Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes, Bloody Disgusting caught up with the filmmakers to talk about their quirky and absolutely bonkers horror that will leave viewers #triggered.

The film stars Aisha Dee as the title character who is invited away on a bachelorette weekend where she ends up stuck in a remote cabin with her high school bully…and a taste for revenge.

The idea for Sissy might be soaked in commentary, but it all blossoms from one simple question: what genuinely terrifies millennials?

“We understood the appeal of the ‘cabin in the woods’ enterprise but wanted to expand upon that cliché,” Hannah tells me. “More so, we also wanted to make a film that pointed at the global anxiety of our time. We asked ourselves, what scares us right now? What genuinely terrifies millennials (apart from the real-world threats of climate change and political warfare)? Social ostracism. Irrelevancy. Cancel culture. Our generation knowing that social media is incredibly toxic and yet choosing to stay tethered to it anyway – as if we don’t have a choice. The increasing rise of online bullying, con-artistry and suicide was compelling to us. On a personal level, we also wanted to explore the long-term mental health ramifications of childhood bullying.”

As eluded to above, Sissy addresses the many complexities in a millennial’s life, so it comes as no surprise that the film is inspired by several coming-of-age classics, including Mean Girls and Carrie, not to mention Bridesmaids, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and even Scream.

“One of Australia’s greatest exports, Muriel’s Wedding is Sissy’s north star,” she adds. “I grew up with it playing on TV every weekend – to the point of nauseam. Even though the film presents as a broad comedy, in our opinion it is actually one of the most depressing, devastating films out there. We attempted to achieve the same tonal balance, the cringe-factor P.J. Hogan nailed.”

Sissy is complex, but it’s also bloody, extremely bloody. The gore levels in this horror film hit Troma levels of insanity.

“One of the things we love about horror is that it’s the only genre where you can express an idea so aggressively, so over the top, without it feeling absurd or unrealistic,” Kane tells me. “The audience craves it: they want to be shocked.

“Social media is so violent in what it’s doing to us emotionally and spiritually, that we may as well be smashing our heads in.”

“What’s the difference?” he notes. “One’s physical and one’s mental, but it’s no less brutal. We’re kicking the shit out of ourselves over a long period of time, willingly giving ourselves deeply rooted complexes – like comparison anxiety – that will end up costing thousands of dollars in therapy to undo, if we ever do. We wanted to represent the violence of that, literally.”

Kane talks in-depth about Sissy‘s extreme levels of blood, splattered across the girls by Larry Van Duynhoven and his Scarecrew Studios.

“These guys would spend months making these prosthetics, hand-feeding every strand of hair on a dummy’s head – and we only had one take to ruin it,” Kane jokes. “It’s really tough doing practical effects on that kind of schedule and budget but they never complained and were always laser focused. I remember we asked Larry for a fake kangaroo and he happened to have one of the ones they used in ‘Skippy’ (an iconic Australian show from the 60s). I’ll never forget being on the side of the road with him, waiting for the car to turn back around so we could get this drive-by shot of a rotting kangaroo, and there’s Larry, kneeling in the dirt off the side of the highway, scooping maggots out of a container and sprinkling them on the roo with his bare hands, in the zone, like a painter.”

While viewers might not realize it, Barlow and Senes were directly influenced by a very specific moment in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist.

“First and foremost, we’re [horror] fans, so we approached this genre from a place of pure curiosity and play,” Hannah tells me, revealing that the drive to make a horror film came out of some burnout following their collab, For Now.

“Somewhat organically, through sheer fandom, the horror genre became the perfect home for our hope. Having previously flirted with it (myself as an actor and Kane with his first solo feature Echoes of War) we both understood that it is the only genre where you can explore any subject, no matter how taboo – which was so enticing to our writer-brains. The challenge invites you to unearth and express what truly frightens you and infect your audience with your unique fear. It’s a seductive problem to solve… which we started doing on a hike one day after re-watching Lars von Trier’s Antichrist – which isn’t an obvious reference for Sissy. But for us, the jamming naturally began as a response to Willem Dafoe being completely undone by a flailing crow. Phwoaaar! *Chef’s kiss*.”

While things snowball into a night from hell, there’s a bit of a gray area as to who the actual antagonist is in Sissy.

Kane sums it up nicely: “If this is a film about self-accountability, you could make the argument that there are multiple characters responsible for what happens. It depends on how you look at it.”

Sissy premieres tonight at the SXSW Film Festival.

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