A modern-day riff on the Salem witch trials, The Sisterhood of Night is, first and foremost, not a horror film. There are no hexes or incantations. Satan is not conjured, nor is any of his minions. Persecution, however, is in abundance. Director Caryn Waechter and screenwriter Marilyn Fu’s drama, based on a short story by Steven Millhauser, has traded the puritanical courts of Salem for the equally reactionary and emotionally-charged court of public opinion. Inside of out titular sisters being hanged or roasted alive on a pyre, they are instead set ablaze and hung out to dry in print and on social media. Why? Because they chose to be different.
It’s a tale as old as humanity. When we cannot absorb and reshape things or people that we do not understand, we immediately seek to expel them from our sight. Our tactics in these times have changed, but the emotional impact that they leave on those being singled out has not. These are the core themes at play in the film and for the most part, it does a good job of getting its point across. The cast is more than capable and the direction just offbeat enough to make the film standout, when the material easily could have been turned into just another preachy movie-of-the-week. While it does dip its toes into those waters quite a bit throughout, it’s not enough to sink it.
Thankfully, the characters are all well-rounded. The titular sisterhood and the reason for the existence and secrecy are well-established throughout, as are the motives for those who within their own high school age group who are persecuting them. Caught in the middle are their parents, school staff (including Kal Penn), and fellow townspeople, who are just as curious, confused, clueless, and angry as the kids they are trying to both understand and protect.
The (often selfish) assumptions made by all parties involved only compound the situation. At almost no point in the ever-worsening sequence of events do any of these groups sit down and actually listen to one another. From the moment that our antagonist (and I use that term loosely) makes the initial accusations of witchcraft after feeling left out by her classmates to the tragedy the it ultimately results in, everyone is too concerned with clamming up or lashing out at each other to actually figure out why there is an issue in the first place.
This can become maddening at times throughout, but only because it rings true to real-life. Still, many of the events can be telegraphed before they happen, which might rub some viewers the wrong way. Myself included. The film is also over-long, particularly when it comes to the third act. It also continues on about fifteen minutes after its tale has come to an end.
As a cautionary coming-of-age drama (of sorts) centered primarily on teenage girls, The Sisterhood of Night admittedly isn’t my kind of film. It is well-made, however, and the main cast members all breathe a lot of life into their characters, which helps to smooth over some of its flaws. I entered the film completely blind and found it to be mostly decent. If you decide to give it a look, just be sure that you don’t go into it expecting a horror film. Instead, take it for what it actually is: a drama about how horrible we can be to one another.