Sissy

About a young woman who runs into an old friend and then winds up getting invited to her bachelorette party (where things almost immediately go wrong), Sissy definitely has a handful of things going for it — in particular, the performances are all solid, the characters are memorable enough, and a lot of the set-pieces are fun. But the film’s in-your-face sense of style is so thoroughly overbearing that it always keeps you at an arm’s length. Directors Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes absolutely cram the film with odd camera angles and distracting stylistic flourishes, and very little of it works. But it’s Kenneth Lampl’s omnipresent, grating score that really sinks the film; it’s almost always there (the film is very rarely silent) and it’s constantly cranked to 11 when it should probably be at a 5? A 6, maybe?? I’m guessing it’s supposed to put you in the headspace of the off-kilter protagonist, but its booming incongruity does the exact opposite of what a good score should do: it calls attention to itself and takes you out of the movie. It’s also so aggressively mixed that it’s frequently hard to make out what’s being said. Why?

*1/2 out of ****