The new horror film Sissy is now streaming on Shudder, and the film’s star loves it for many reasons. Aisha Dee stars as the title character (also called Cecilia), and the film touches on various topics, including bullying, social media and mental health. In an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com, Dee explained what made her want to be part of the movie.
“This script came in, and it just celebrated all of the things that I love about horror as a genre, and then also it felt really nostalgic,” Dee exclusively told PopCulture. “It felt very Australian to me, and I just fell in love with the story and the character. And it was just such a page-turner, the script, I read it in one sitting, and that’s hard for me to do. I don’t have the best attention span, but I made it all the way through and I was like, ‘Wow, there’s something really special about this.’ And I just felt really connected to Cecilia, the character, especially. I’m super lucky that I actually got to do it.”
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In the film, Cecilia is a social media influencer with over 200,000 followers. While out shopping, she runs into her childhood best friend Emma (Hannah Barlow) who invites her to her bachelorette party at a remote cabin in the mountains. Once Cecilia, Emma and their friends get to the cabin, Cecilia runs into Alex (Emily De Margheriti) who torments her just like she did when they were children.
Cecilia seems to have two different personalities because she has her life on social media and it’s different from what her life is in the real world. “It never even occurred to me that she was a split person. I always saw her as just one whole being,” Dee said. “But I guess when it comes to how she is in certain environments, I think that can be true of all of us. The life that we have on our social media versus the life that we’re actually living in our real life, they’re two very different things. I don’t think anyone’s social media is really accurately representing what it is to get out of bed in the morning and all of that stuff. So it felt like a whole person to me, because you saw her in all of those different environments.”
Sissy premiered at the SXSW festival earlier this year and was picked up by Shudder. And Dee’s reaction to the film when she first watched it will likely be everyone’s reaction when they watch it on Shudder. “I thought, ‘This is one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever seen,’” she explained. I was like, ‘I don’t know if people are going to like this,’ but I liked it. I always want to make stuff that doesn’t feel derivative. I want to make things that feel new and feel like they’re pushing the boundaries of what we believe a certain genre can do. And I feel like, just the way that this movie sits in this no man’s land, I can’t quite think of anything that really is similar. It’s its own thing.”
