Director: Stan Brooks
Writer: Fab Filippo, Adam Till (Screenplay) Bob Mitchell (Book)
Starring: Abigail Breslin, Georgie Henley, Mira Sorvino, James Russo, Rusty Schwimmer, Zoe Belkin
Plot: Tired of their mother’s alcoholism and a string of her abusive boyfriends, two sisters plot to kill her.
Tagline – Being a teenager can be murder.
Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Verdict: Lacks the Threat
Story: Deadly Sisters starts when Sandra (Breslin), Beth (Henley), their mother Linda (Sorvino) move to a new town to start a new life, only Linda doesn’t take long to fall of the wagon again, forcing Sandra and Beth to take a more adult role for their younger brother.
As the two sisters continue to get tired of the behaviour of their mother, they decide to look for an alternative answer, they plan to kill her, so they can escape her latest abusive boyfriend, only will they be able to follow through or it is just a project.
Thoughts on Deadly Sisters
Characters – Sandra is the stronger of the two sisters, she always wants to be the centre of attention, with her planning always doing the protecting work for her sister or younger brother, hitting the meetings her mother misses and with her spotlight craving nature, she grabs people’s attention. Beth is the other sister, she has decided to go goth for the new school year, she is the target the new boyfriends abuse and is treating everything more like the project to escape the position they find themselves in. Linda is the alcoholic mother of the girls, she constantly falls off the wagon, picks abusive men around the house, and while the girls try to see the best in her, she just keeps letting them down, forcing them going with their ideas.
Performances – Abigail Breslin is great in the showboat side of her character with Georgie Henley bringing the quiet side of her character to life with ease, however when it comes to the final act, things seem to get taken away from them in the performance side of things. Mira Sorvino does well as the alcoholic parent who is struggling to stay on top of everything in her life.
Story – The story here follows two sisters that decide they have had enough of their mother’s self-destructive ways and decide to take the matter into their own hands. This does play into the ideas that it could well be a project between sisters with it being more about how they could get away with it, this is the fun side, as it would make sense for them to act like this with what is going on in their personal lives. We do get to go down the road of committing a crime would lead to their own spiral of self-destruction. This is based on a real story of two sisters, with the names changed, which does end up making this fill like an MTV documentary on the incident, rather than an edgy thriller.
Crime – The crime side of this film does follow in planning by the sisters and how they look to get away with it, showing the rookie mistakes along the way.
Settings – The film does use the settings to show us how the sisters are getting tired of the lives they are being put through, wishing they would have more from their lives.
Scene of the Movie – The day after.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – The planning with friends seems too naïve.
Final Thoughts – This is an interesting crime thriller that takes a look at two sisters trying to fix their own struggles in life, only they end up going too far, well enough acted, only it doesn’t seem to finish as strong as it starts.
Overall: Fizzles Out.
