Written and directed by Agata Trzebuchowska, during the summer holidays, Maks and his older sister Emma are sent to the Polish countryside to care for their ailing grandmother. Their grandmother’s frail presence takes on an increasingly disturbing quality, turning a once-idyllic summer into a haunting passage into adulthood. Starring: Konrad Kąkol, Katarzyna Łubik, Monika Niemczyk, Julian Świeżewski and Eliza Rycembel.
There is one particular subject which offers little other than shock value, discomfort and disgust in any film, and that’s incest. It’s a tricky question to answer why in this day and age, any filmmaker feels it necessary to include, and yet here we are again, with Agata Trzebuchowska’s debut feature diving right in. Arguably it’s because it provides those exact things, it makes audiences uncomfortable, it shocks and it strikes easily bold notes. However, it’s also cheap, twisted and unnecessary.
The most disappointing thing is that if you were to remove that incestuous vein from the story, this could have been something interesting. The curious, concerning changes to their grandmother offers up the potential for a great piece of creepy, disturbed body horror, and yet it sadly plays second fiddle to some brother-sister sexual tension. There was also even more potential in the sister character, Emma (Katarzyna Łubik) who feels decidedly broken, and her behaviour is persistently challenging others, unbalanced and unpredictable.
Another reason that it’s disappointing is the style is actually good, the cinematography from Maciej Edelman has a great colour and presence to it. There’s a charged atmosphere, Trzebuchowska’s direction moves well, and creates an ominous, foreboding tone. The performances are also solid, they don’t get a tonne to do here since the story gets somewhat stuck on the same note, but Konrad Kąkol, Katarzyna Łubik and Monika Niemczyk all craft decent portrayals. All of that is simply let down by overwhelming Sick with a thick air of perversion and moral ambiguity.
Sick demonstrates a lot of potential from director Agata Trzebuchowska, but the writing undermines that. Visually, it’s ticking plenty of the right boxes, it doesn’t over-extend its runtime, and there’s good cast at work, but the plot has little to offer. For those who enjoy purposefully schlocky cinema which overtly employs shock value, this might be a fun watch. For those who distinctly don’t enjoy lurid attempts to make you uncomfortable, you’d probably be better off avoiding this one. It’s definitely a film that’s best to know a little of what you’re getting yourself in for before you dive in.
