By George & Josh Bate
The horror genre, by definition, has always exhibited a willingness to tap into the most disturbing, off-putting, and taboo topics, themes, and imagery known to man, but there are some areas even horror tends to shy away from. In Sick, a new Polish film making its world premiere at this year’s Fantastic Fest, filmmaker Agata Trzebuchowska, who is known for her acting career in the likes of IDA, does not flinch as she positions the uncomfortable side of human connection front and center in a film. What emerges is a twisted fairy tale and psychosexual coming-of-age horror movie that is as uncomfortable as it is mesmerizing.
Sick follows Maks (Konrad Kąkol), a sixteen-year-old boy sent away to the country to look after his bedridden grandmother (Monika Niemczyk). Isolated from his normal life, he spends much of his time glued to Instagram and working up the nerve to message a girl he likes. His older sister Emmaare (Katarzyna Łubik) eventually arrives, initially providing welcome companionship and another set of hands for their grandmother. That relief quickly evaporates as their familiar sibling teasing becomes increasingly provocative, with Emma pushing her brother’s boundaries while showing little interest in helping with their grandmother. Meanwhile, the grandmother’s condition begins to change in ways neither sibling can explain.
From its ominous opening, Sick makes it clear that something is wrong. The introduction of Szyman, a neighbor who once worked with the grandmother, immediately plants a seed of foreboding, while Maciej Sondij’s score hangs over the film like a warning for something looming on the horizon. For a while, Trezbuchowska allows her debut feature to breathe in this discomfort, without much in the way of overt horror. The brother is simply a typical sixteen-year-old boy: awkward, horny, socially uncertain, and fascinated by the possibilities of a world that is beginning to open up to him. The intimacy of the film’s middle section, particularly a quiet moment involving a character playing cards, adds to its strange fairy-tale quality, grounding the characters in recognizable family dynamics before the movie begins pulling those dynamics apart.
The grandmother is perhaps the film’s most intriguing component. Trezbuchowska wisely refuses to overstate her presence. During the first act, she is frequently kept slightly out of focus, partially obscured, pushed to the edge of the frame, or buried in shadow. When she eventually appears healthy for reasons that remain unexplained, the effect is deeply unnerving. There is something particularly effective about the mystery surrounding her, and Sick almost makes you wish the entire movie had been devoted to this character and whatever strange history surrounds her, such is how captivating Niemczyk is in this role. She recalls, in a loose sense, the unsettling presence of Aunt Gladys in Weapons, but Trezbuchowska is careful not to turn her into an obvious horror-movie monster.
Then Sick reveals what kind of fairy tale it actually wants to be. Taking the barebones architecture of Hansel and Gretel – children isolated in the countryside, an ominous older figure, food, temptation, and a seemingly safe home – and running it into increasingly uncomfortable territory, Trezbuchowska gradually introduces its most taboo ideas. For a while, you may convince yourself that the film surely isn’t building toward the subject it seems to be circling. Then it does. The brother’s sexual curiosity and yearning for his sister become impossible to ignore, while Emma appears to relish the power she has over such an impressionable, sexually inquisitive younger sibling. The film’s exploration of incest is deliberately off-putting, but it also gives Sick its point of novelty. Horror movies frequently meditate on the uncomfortable angles of adolescence, but few are willing to confront the confusion surrounding intimacy and the twisted ways human beings sometimes attempt to socially connect in a manner that Sick does.
In turn, the film’s coming-of-age story proves considerably darker than the usual genre treatment. Growing up here isn’t merely about discovering sexuality; it is about discovering that desire itself can be confusing, selfish, frightening, and even sickening (hence the title, which can be interpreted as referred to a number of different things). Sick understands the adolescent impulse to test boundaries and then pushes that impulse into deeply uncomfortable places.
The film’s biggest strength is its willingness to continually reinvent itself. It takes a number of surprising twists and turns, and almost every turn leads somewhere darker and more unsettling than where it once was. Rather than immediately explaining its mysteries, Trezbuchowska lets them accumulate, confronting uncomfortable subjects with an increasingly unflinching lens. The result isn’t always easy to watch, and some viewers will likely find the incestuous material more alienating than provocative, yet there is an undeniable confidence in the way the film commits to its ideas rather than backing away from them.
VERDICT: 8/10
Makings its world premiere at this year’s Fantastic Fest, Sick takes the barebones of Hansel and Gretel and runs with them into uncomfortable, off-putting, yet somehow mesmerizing direction. With its foreboding score by Maciej Sondij, picturesque rural setting, ominous grandmother figure, and increasingly disturbing psychosexual undercurrents, Agta Trzebuchowska’s debut feature becomes a twisted fairy tale about the haunting transition to adulthood. It taps into the darker side of our desire to connect with others, follows a sexually curious and impressionable boy into places he cannot fully understand, and surrounds him with people whose intentions are never entirely clear. Trezbuchowska doesn’t overstate the grandmother, who is simultaneously the film’s most interesting and most underdeveloped element, so much so that an entire film constructed around this character alone would be of interest. Horror has long had a fascination with the macabre and troubling, but Sick approaches themes and topics most genre films, even the most boundary-pushing, shy away from. In turn, Trzebuchowska has crafted a twisted fairy tale and psychosexual coming-of-age horror movie that, while not overtly scary in any particular way, is likely to cause palpable discomfort in its viewers.