[Editorial] Sister, Sister: Is She Your Saviour or Your Downfall?

Relationships between sisters can range from simpatico to fraught to downright hellish. Horror movies often reflect the complicated dynamics that can arise when two sisters are together, whether it's during their childhood, their coming-of-age or adulthood, and these films can be especially evocative for women. At times, the identities of the two women (or two girls) can blend, mirror one another or become so entwined that it's impossible to tell one from the other. 

In the John Fawcett-directed Canadian horror classic Ginger Snaps (2000), we meet teen sisters stuck in a small town, pledging to one another, "Out by 16 or dead on the scene, but together forever." And they're not kidding around. Their first scene together portrays a rather grim art project where they pose as suicide victims, then take photographs. Not long after, the girls are on a late-night walk when a werewolf bites older sister Ginger. She had gotten her first period earlier that evening, and her sexual awakening begins quickly – and violently. 

At first, the younger, cautious Brigitte trails after hot-headed Ginger, even as Big Sis develops lycanthropic tendencies. But as Ginger becomes more and more out of control, Brigitte becomes the leader in their relationship; she works with the friendly neighborhood pot dealer to find a cure for her werewolf sister, and she cleans up the (very bloody) results of her big sister's murderous rampage through their tiny town. 

Although Ginger claims that she'll always protect Brigitte, it's clear that she has a warped sense of what that means. To Ginger, protection is suspecting every male of having nasty intentions toward her younger sister, causing her to become possessive and jealous. Brigitte is the opposite: the film is ultimately about her quest to save her sister's life and whatever soul she has left. 

Ginger Snaps (2000)

But the two have perhaps drifted too far apart. Ginger is experimenting sexually (and chemically), and her lycanthropy adds a twisted edge to her encounters – her partners are likely to end up mangled and bloody. Brigitte's most important relationship is with Ginger, but Ginger doesn't prioritize her in quite the same way. 

In the climax of the film, Brigitte tells Ginger, "You wrecked everything for me that isn't about you," then exchanges blood with her, thus infecting herself with werewolf blood. The two are so enmeshed that even while Brigitte realizes Ginger is beyond help, she can't write her out of her life; she can't give up on the big sister whom she's been best friends with since birth. Even though it means she'll be destroyed in the process, Brigitte is unable to separate fully from her sister. 

Similar to Ginger Snaps, Julia Ducournau's French-Belgian film Raw (2016) features a sexual awakening accompanied by manic bloodlust – but in this case, it's the younger sibling who must contend with her new and unusual feelings. The film follows Justine as she joins her older sister Alexia at veterinary school, where the family's lifelong vegetarian lifestyle is put to the test in a particularly gruesome way. 

Alexia encourages her sister to go along with the elaborate hazing rituals at their school, including the consumption of raw rabbit kidneys. While Alexia sees herself as helping her younger sister fit in, Justine is turned off by the thought of eating meat – that is, until she tries it and becomes obsessed, going as far to eat raw chicken out of her roommate's fridge in the middle of the night. 

Raw (2016)

Indeed, both sisters feel as though they're "helping" the other in stranger and stranger ways: Justine tries to help her older sibling by correcting her homework assignments, and Alexia tries to help her younger sister by giving her a bikini wax in the dorm. In a scene that will make even the most hardened of us squirm, the wax gets stuck, and when Alexia grabs scissors to "fix" it, Justine grabs back her autonomy (she didn't even want the wax in the first place!) and says, "It's my pussy!" while kicking her sister away.

Alexia accidentally chops off her own finger during the melee, and Justine's insatiable meat cravings leads her to … eat her sister's finger. Surprisingly, this doesn't damage their sisterly relationship much. But we soon see Alexia's supremely cruel (and perhaps vengeful) side emerge: after Justine gets extremely drunk at a party, her sister takes her to a morgue and films Justine on all four fours, in full beast mode, trying to taste the human flesh of a corpse. 

After Justine learns about this recording, the sisters have a knockdown, drag-out fight, which quickly devolves into them viciously biting one another. The students who have gathered to watch the girls scrap are horrified, and the sisters eventually walk off arm in arm, reunited in their otherness. 

As she tends to a nearly catatonic Alexia, Justine morphs into the more dominant sister by the end of the film. Justine stands over Alexia as she's sprawled on the floor of a dorm room, using a ski pole to prop up her sister's head. For a moment, Justine seems to be contemplating just how far she'll go with that pole. We see that the more confident Alexia has faded away and been replaced by her younger sister. Justine has now assumed the older sister role; she's the one in charge as she holds her sister's life in her hands. As Alexia tells Justine early on in the film, "You know you're the favorite; I'm the weirdo in the family." She's proven herself correct. Justine survives.

Written and directed by Kim Jee-woon, A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) is a South Korean horror film based on a folktale. The identities of the sisters and the timeline of the plot both blur, turning it into a murky mystery where the viewers are kept on their toes, trying to define the differences between the two girls and where they are in their tragic story.  

At first glance, it appears that Su-mi (the older, more composed sister) and Su-yeon (her easily frightened baby sister) have returned home after their mother's death by suicide to stay with their father and Eun-joo, the quintessential evil stepmother. It is Eun-joo who tells Su-mi, "The world isn't as sweet as you picture it," foreshadowing the rest of Su-mi's stay in the house, perpetually full of shadows and dark corners.  

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)

Su-yeon climbs into bed with Su-mi after an encounter with their mother's ghost. In the way of all protective older siblings, Su-mi investigates and returns to her room, promising Su-yeon, "I'll always be with you." And she is – mostly. Su-mi protects Su-yeon with everything she has. She defends her against their stepmother's abuse, even as their father seems genuinely perplexed by Su-mi's accusations. 

The bombshell drops when their father tells Su-mi that Su-yeon is, in fact, dead. Su-mi doesn't accept this – and since Su-yeon is visible to the audience, we're caught between Su-mi's ardent belief in her little sister and their grieving father's claims. Sadly, their father is correct – Su-mi has been having some very wild trauma-induced hallucinations. 

Through flashbacks, we see Su-yeon discovering the sisters' mother hanging in a wardrobe. In her shock, Su-yeon tries to rescue her mother, only to topple the heavy wardrobe onto herself. Su-yeon quietly begs for Su-mi to save her, but unbeknownst to her, Su-mi is already out of the house and cannot hear her sister's cries for help. Su-yeon dies an agonizing death, alone and frightened. Without Su-yeon, Su-mi's mind splintered from the guilt of not saving her as well as the sorrow of living without her.

Evil stepmother Eun-joo (revealed to be a hallucination of Su-mi's) tells Su-mi, "You want to forget something, totally wipe it out of your mind. But you never can. It can't go away… It follows you around like a ghost." Su-mi was unable to contend with the stupefying grief that rolled over her family, so she dealt with it by creating an alternate reality in her mind. 

A Tale of Two Sisters begins and ends in a psychiatric hospital. A doctor questions Su-mi: "Who do you think you are?" And Su-mi truly does not know herself without her sister there to anchor her, and without having her sister there to protect. Their traumatic and untimely separation affects her so deeply that she winds up losing sight of her very own identity. For Su-mi, the world was only bearable with her sister. 

Like A Tale of Two Sisters, Sisters (1972) explores sibling codependency. American filmmaker Brian De Palma co-wrote and directed the horror film after learning about the bizarre fate of real-life conjoined twins Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova. In De Palma's version, Margot Kidder stars as Danielle, a French-Canadian model in New York City. Danielle is being stalked by her ex-husband Emil and hassled by her (formerly conjoined) twin sister Dominique. But there's a twist, of course. 

Sisters (1972)

When the twins were still physically attached, the placid Danielle fell for Emil and began drifting away from the more volatile Dominique. During their courtship, Danielle asks Emil, "Why can't you make [Dominique] go away?" Even as she asks, her face is full of concern for her twin (who is mere inches away), suggesting that her emotions about Dominique are more complex. 

Dominique's feelings are a bit more straightforward: She takes gardening shears to a then-pregnant Danielle's belly, murdering the baby. This leads to Emil separating the twins; he tells Danielle, "The only way to save you is to separate you from Dominique." Unsurprisingly, Danielle's life is prioritized, and Dominique dies during the separation.  

Danielle is overcome by the guilt, shame and trauma of losing her twin sister, and she's conflicted about Emil's involvement in the separation. She cannot process the death of her only family (the twins were orphaned at a young age). Emil tells Danielle, "Dominique never died for you; you kept her alive in your mind… sometimes you even became her to reassure yourself of her existence. You could never accept the guilt, the terrible guilt, for Dominique's death." 

Danielle was both herself – flirtatious, a little wounded, delicate and sweet – and Dominique, who is more domineering, unstable and violent. Like Su-mi in A Tale of Two Sisters, Danielle is unable to accept the death of her sister and creates a different persona to cope with the loss. Emil reveals that every time he and Danielle slept together, the Dominique persona would emerge and take control. 

As Emil kisses Danielle, she almost immediately proves him right by "becoming" Dominique. She stabs him, and when the police ask Danielle if her sister committed this murder, she calmly tells them, "My sister died last spring," proving that murdering Emil finally allowed her to accept her sister's death. She needed to rid herself of the person who had cut the cord and ended her relationship with Dominique before coming to terms with the fact that her twin was no longer with her. 

In the American cult classic Alice, Sweet Alice (1976), directed by Alfred Sole, two sisters (the youngest we explore here) are defined in relation to one another. The eponymous Alice is forced into the "bad sister" role because the angelic Karen has taken the role of the "good sister." Karen is preparing for her First Communion, and she's doted upon by everyone in the movie, including her priest Father Tom. 

Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)

Karen is charming and polite when visiting the priest; Alice creeps around in an opaque mask and frightens his housekeeper. Alice stands at attention, warily eyeing everyone else; Karen peacefully sits. Alice is well aware of her position in the family. When her mother questions her whereabouts, she retorts, "Why should you care where I go? I'm not Karen!"

Treated like the proverbial bad seed, it's no surprise that Alice is jealous of Karen. After Karen is murdered and set on fire (in a church!), even their own parents wonder if Alice committed the horrific crime. The day of the murder, Alice even steals Karen's veil and tries to take her place at First Communion. While it's true that Alice is no gem (she steals Karen's toys, mocks her and torments her – not to mention others), it's a stretch to believe their sibling rivalry drove her to murder.

And because of the focus on Karen, no one bothers to notice that their repugnant landlord is molesting Alice whenever he gets the chance. Alice has a strange collection of knick knacks that she treats as an altar. Instead of asking why she needed this altar, she's ignored at best, and locked in a psychiatric hospital and accused of sororicide at worst. She suffers because of the world's comparison of the two sisters. She's never able to form her own personality when Karen's around; she's always existing in opposition to Karen, who is truthfully rather bland and spoiled. In contrast to some of our other sisterly pairs, Alice is only free to fully be herself once her sister is out of the picture. She has suffocated under the weight of living as the "bad sister."  

Horror movies like Ginger Snaps, A Tale of Two Sisters, Sisters, Raw and Alice, Sweet Alice (not to mention many, many others) have long recognized that the most chilling horror can grow out of our relationships with those to whom we are closest. From childhood to adulthood, women must contend with their sisters. They can be playmates, confidantes or best friends – and just as easily, they can be rivals, tormentors and enemies. These relationships usually ebb and flow with time. And as women can define themselves in relation to their sisters, there's no telling whether your saviour today will be your downfall tomorrow.   

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