Cinepocalypse 2019: Kindred Spirits, The Swerve | Festivals & Awards
“Kindred Spirits,” written by Chris Sivertson, has a disturbingly flat idea of its world of women, involving the high schooler Nicole (Sasha Frolova), her mother Chloe (Thora Birch) and Birch’s younger sister, Sadie (Caitlin Stasey). Taking place in a generic image of suburbia, “Kindred Spirits” starts with a glossy memory, accompanied by an overly whimsy score, where a young Nicole is saved by a young Sadie from getting hit by a car in the middle of the road. Flash forward to years later, and Nicole is an angsty teenager with some aggression problems, and is distant from her mother. But when Sadie reappears in their lives after years having been off the grid, it’s a happy occasion—a cool aunt for Nicole to connect to, another chance for Chloe to have a relationship with her sister, and also stolen moments for Chloe to spend time with a man named Alex (Macon Blair), who she is secretly seeing. It’s not too long into the bonding between Sadie and Nicole before Sadie starts to show a wicked, manipulative side, and one that involves trying to look and be like Nicole, and then trying to destroy her.
As Sadie settles into the house, “Kindred Spirits” is propelled by a straight-forward scheme, and doesn’t have the performances to give its clear character tensions some depth. Thora Birch is given so little to do here, a dull mother figure for both her daughter and her younger sister. She's seemingly called upon by the script whenever it needs more conflict, often related to Nicole's real but unbelieved paranoia about Sadie. And poor Nicole, she’s written with every teen girl movie cliche, including dashing to her room and flopping onto her bed, or dancing around her room to generic rock music with angst.
Along with its jarringly indifferent framing and staging for its many conversation-driven sequences, the movie struggles to slowly build a visceral menace. Caitlin Stasey tries to give some physicality to a ferocious role by reverting to teenage-like talk in a flash, but it doesn’t create a cohesive psychosis. It too readily feels like a character constructed in large part by some overcooked acting takes, creating an overly broad idea of who Sadie really is.
“Kindred Spirits” is just too plodding with its manipulation tale that echoes the adult ‘90s thrillers it’s inspired by. McKee's film has a curious ambition to give life to the type of thriller that’s since been relegated to Lifetime movies—the soft-lighting innocence that veers to juicy menace—but it never gets that idea off the ground, and loses its self-awareness in the process. The closest that “Kindred Spirits” comes to wicked fun is with a nasty kill late into the story—a sharp moment in an otherwise dull thriller.
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