Sissy, starring The Bold Type's Aisha Dee, sees social media influencers turn slasher queens in Canberra horror film

It was this rant that fuelled the duo to write and direct the horror-satire movie, Sissy - a cabin-in-the-woods style of slasher flick that was filmed in Canberra during the height of the pandemic.

Starring The Bold Type's Aisha Dee, it's a film that questions how people can blindly follow influencers online, particularly those of mental health advocates. And more to the point, what happens when the person dishing out the advice is putting a facade.

Canberrans were always going to have a soft spot for this film. There is a certain love that comes from being able to spot familiar locations - including Civic club 88mph and the Dickson Woolworths carpark - on the big screen (particularly when the film has nothing to do with politics). So it makes sense that the film is a highlight of this month's Capital Film Festival, before its theatrical release later this year.

The fact the film began its life within the region is just the cherry on top.

It was the end of 2018, and Belle Gibson had just had her now-famous interview with 60 Minutes, which saw the wellness blogger - who falsely claimed her fabricated brain cancer had been cured - confronted by reporter Tara Brown.

It was the social media scandal that gripped the nation and started to raise questions about the dangers of the idolisation of influencers. These were questions Barlow and Senes discussed at length during a trip to Thredbo.

"I've got a few nieces and just seeing these young women, girls using social media and idolising these influencers and just wondering who put these people in this position? Who allowed these people who never passed any real test or anything like that, to be influencers?" Senes says.

"Anyone can get online and start their own account and build a fan base. And there's something dangerous about that.

"It's not all negative; there are positives too. But I think just the nature of an influencer, and that word - which I know influencers don't like anymore - but there's something problematic about that, I think.

"And that's out of that fear of, what if we're lionising the wrong people? Especially in the mental health space. How do you know where they're getting their advice from?"

For Barlow and Senes, it was less about preaching against social media, and more about exploring the shades of grey in between. To be more specific, the shade of grey that involve a mental health advocate who uses her influencer lifestyle to avoid her own trauma.

"To just sweep them under the rug and be there to help other people, it's like that thing on aeroplanes, right? Where you're supposed to put the oxygen on yourself before you help someone else," Senes says.

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Meet Cecilia, the eponymous protagonist of Sissy. Online - and in front of a perfectly curated backdrop - she has her life together, living the Millennial dream as a social media influencer, focusing on wellbeing and mental health for her 200,000 followers. Offline, the cracks begin to show. With the dirty dishes piling up in the sink and cold pizza in hand, we watch as Cecilia (Sissy) settles in to watch a trashy Love Island-type show.

And this two-sided life could easily continue if not for a chance encounter with her childhood friend, Emma (played by director, Barlow). As tweens, these two were inseparable, promising each other that nothing would ever come between them. That is until Emma meets her new friend Alex (played by Canberran Emily De Margheriti). Suddenly the tides turn, and Cecilia becomes the target of Alex's bullying.

Twelve years later, on a run to the local shops, Cecilia runs into Emma, who is about to head out on her hen's weekend in a remote cabin in the mountains. In a bid to reconnect, Emma invites her childhood friend to come along - much to the dismay of maid-of-honour Alex.

Trapped in a remote (albeit an amazing architecturally-designed) house in the middle of nowhere with your childhood bully - what could go wrong?

Best case scenario, it's a mildly awkward weekend, possibly even a chance to reconcile over the past. Worst case scenario, the tension leads to a fight which tarnishes the weekend. Or, in this case, it results in a murderous rampage.

"It's a subversion of the whole final girl theme in a slasher film, and then also not knowing how you should feel at the end," Senes says.

"What does that say about you if the person that you've been rooting for turns out to do these things that you would never do?"

"But what's been remarkable is just seeing how people have jumped to Cecilia's defence, and they've taken to her. That was always the intention, but you've got to set up a set of scenarios if you're going to do that where the other people in her life seem almost more villainous than she is."

For Emily De Margheriti, Sissy offered two things.

The first was a chance to film a feature film in her hometown.

"I never thought I would be army crawling through Isaacs Pines at night before this," she says.

"It was fun performing and acting in those places as well, because it reminds me of home and in a way, it made the scenes very real to me. It was hard to separate that."

The second was to sink her teeth into a role that was relatable - in a very unrelatable way. She knows just how dramatic female friendships can be in those tween years - complete with BFFL necklaces to declare who's your best friend for life. But those relationships have never led her crawling through rough terrain in nothing but her bathers and a robe, fighting for her life.

"I feel like most women - we've all had a best friend when you're young, and then you have that other friend that's just there that takes your best friend," De Margheriti says.

"Female friendships are so interesting when you're younger, and I think they hold more weight as well. They mean so much to you when you're younger. It's the end of the world if someone runs away, or does something mean to you, or your friends leave you.

"And those BFFL necklaces as well - to me those are nostalgic. I remember I used to have those. And I used to have them with a few different people, too.

"It's kind of funny when you think about it, it's like you have to claim your best friend when you're younger. What is that? You don't do that anymore. It's very strange."

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If Sissy followed the slasher film rule book - if there was ever such a thing - De Marghertii's character of Alex would be the villain. It writes itself, doesn't it? A schoolyard bully who is back to finish the job.

But the thing is, Sissy doesn't play by the rules. And Alex isn't without her own trauma to overcome in adulthood.

"It's interesting because when people see the trailer they always presume that I'm the villain," De Margheriti says.

"But as a character, I found Alex quite interesting because she's a survivor of abuse, and she's very strong. I liked her because she has very strong boundaries as well, and I feel like I can relate to that - I have very strong boundaries.

"But she had a lot of pain that she would hold within herself and I found that very difficult, to be honest. But it was interesting to explore that and to see what it was like to be her."

If you Google the synopsis for Sissy, you're met with two just two lines.

"Teen best friends Cecilia and Emma, after a decade run into each other. Cecilia is invited on Emma's bachelorette weekend where she gets stuck in a remote cabin with her high school bully with a taste for revenge."

Those two lines are all you need to know who is the perpetrator. And yet when the opening scene of both the film and the trailer greets you with a smiling Cecilia in front of a bubblegum pink backdrop, you're immediately on her side. Knowing you have just sat down to watch a slasher film, you are prepared to follow her to her destiny as the final girl, and pin everything on Alex.

But even as you follow her through the film, and you realise that the synopsis wasn't lying when she had a taste for revenge, it's hard to call her the villain.

"I think if Aisha was here, she would probably scold us for even considering calling Cecilia villainous," Senes says.

In preparation for the film, Barlow and Senes watched plenty of 70s slasher films - classics such as Friday the 13th, Halloween and Carrie.

Through this, they found this thread of the villain was often the "other". They were masked, or the sense of terror or threat was coming from a fear of the unknown. And while these threats extended from external social fears created by the Cold War, that wasn't necessarily going to cut it for a 21st-century slasher film.

"I think in our generation and Gen Z, the threat is very much internal, and that's because of our dealings with social media," Barlow says.

"If you're going to represent that in a slasher film in 2022, it has to be about this idea that the slasher villain, for lack of a better term, is coming from within the protagonist."

It's almost unexpected for a slasher film to have a greater moral to the story. There are plenty of horror films out there that do have a message to them beyond don't go into the woods at night, but it's not what we have come to expect as an audience.

But, from producer Lisa Shaunessy's point of view, that's exactly what drew her and production company Arcadia to the project. They're not in the business of making horror films just for the sake of killing people on screen.

"I think our first reaction to Sissy was, here's a film that looks at social media, which has just become such a, not only daily, but minutely part of everybody's lives," she says.

"And they're scratching under the surface a little bit here so it was a great, fertile ground to make a horror movie and a satire that spoke to all the things that I think all of us think about social media at different times.

"And yet, we're still compelled to engage in it because it is a part of daily life and communication and receiving news and connecting with people now more than ever before. But it's the dark side of social media and how easy it is to pull the wool over people's eyes. And we just found that fascinating and just very current."

Sissy will be at the Capital Film Festival on June 17 and 22.The Capital Film Festival will be at Dendy Cinema from June 15 to 26. For more information or tickets go to capitalfilmfestial.com.au.

Sissy will be out for theatrical release later this year.

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