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Released by: Synapse Films
Released on: 8/25/2009
Director: Eben McGarr
Cast: Leslie Andrews, Stephen Geoffreys, John McGarr, Charlie Trepany, Chris W. King
Year: 2007
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The Movie:
Sick Girl starts when a yellow bus full of Catholic schoolgirls hits the road. One of the girls drops her panties out the window as sign that her boyfriend, trailing in the car behind them with his chubby friend and listening to Sloppy Seconds on the stereo, should meet up with her. The bus stops to pick up a disheveled looking girl named Izzy (Leslie Andrews) at the side of the road who wastes no time pissing on one of the nuns and killing the rest of the passengers. Back at the side of the road again, the guys make the mistake of stopping her for and meet a similarly grisly demise.
From here we learn why Izzy is the way she is. Her home life is an odd one. A middle child, she's got incestuous feelings for her older brother, Tommy (Ian Villalobos), and is insanely protective of her younger one. There aren't any parents around and Izzy winds up in a somewhat paternal role because of this. Her older brother gets sent to Iraq and her younger one gets into trouble with a local bully at school, causing Izzy to intervene much to the chagrin of a family friend/biker named Barney (John McGarr). As events transpire that put her 'family' in some sticky situations, we see Izzy start to unravel in a chillingly calm manner and with not an once of remorse.
The single stand out factor that makes Sick Girl work is the performance delivered by Leslie Andrews in the lead role. Andrew's has got a really atypical look for a female lead. She's tomboyish with her short hair and multiple tattoos and she's got a certain scruffiness to her that is simultaneously snotty and adorable. You could dismiss her easily enough as a semi-androgynous punk kid but she's got that certain something that makes her screen presence work in the role. She plays her part so calmly that you never once get the impression that she's even breaking a sweat even when she's torturing people in the barn or shooting at them with a pistol big enough to make Harry Callahan jealous.
Writer/director Eben McGarr is smart enough to put the bulk of the film on Andrews' shoulders as the rest of the cast just doesn't deliver nearly as well. No one stands out as terrible while at the same time no one stands out as remarkable - in fact, aside from Andrews, no one stands out at all. Some of the dialogue in the script feels forced and awkward while some of the plot devices and some of the decisions that the characters make seem to come out of left field. Sick Girl is a movie with some fairly substantial holes in it, but Andrews' performance makes it worth a watch. On top of that, there are a couple of genuinely unsettling set pieces created in this picture that will stick with you after it's over. It's nasty and violent but not so over the top that it takes you out of the picture and the effects are quite well done particularly when you take the low budget into account.
There are moments where you'll want to see Izzy get what she deserves and other moments where you'll definitely feel sorry for her and almost understand why she is the way that she is in this story. The film goes back and forth between these two opposites but ultimately doesn't make a valid case for her actions despite some obvious effort. Moments like that, where you actually feel for the character, are interesting but the film's morality does feel like it's been wedged into the plot simply for the sake of justifying a lot of the more exploitative material that it dives into head first.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Sick Girl looks pretty decent on DVD. Some shots early on in the film look a bit bleached out in terms of color reproduction, with hot whites overpowering the other hues around them and in these scenes the blood almost looks brown, but this is on purpose. The anamorphic 1.78.1 transfer is likely as good as the source material would allow for and there aren't any authoring problems to report. Detail and clarity are about what you'd expect out of a low budget feature like this and while the movie has a raw, grittiness to it at times, the transfer is strong.
The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track is pretty decent in terms of quality. There are no quality control issues here, most of the dialogue is plenty easy to follow and the score and effects are properly balanced in the mix except for a couple of spots where they're unusually loud which is probably intentional on the part of the filmmakers in order to get a couple of jumps out of the audience.
The biggest and best of the extras on the disc is the Death By… featurette in which Leslie Andrews is interviewed on camera when she isn't setting up her camera and taking pictures of herself as if she were dead. Also worth checking out is the interview with Stephen Geoffreys.
Aside from that, Synapse supplies a pair of trailers for the film, an amusing outtake reel, a funny faux public service announcement spot with Izzy in it, some animated menus, and chapter selection. Inside the keepcase is an insert that reproduces the cover art sans text and titles on one side and advertises a couple of other recent Synapse DVDs on the flipside.
The Final Word:
While Sick Girl may not be an unsung underground classic, Leslie Andrews' performance and unusually captivating screen presence makes it worth a look. It's flawed, yes, but there's enough here that works that the movie is worth checking out and Synapse has done their usual strong work on the presentation and extra features.