The Sisterhood of Night

The Sisterhood of Night
Directed by	Caryn Waechter
Screenplay by	Marilyn Fu
Produced by	Lydia Dean Pilcher Elizabeth Cuthrell
Starring	Georgie Henley Kara Hayward Kal Penn Olivia DeJonge
Music by	The Crystal Method Tobias Enhus
Production companies	Evenstar Films Cine Mosaic
Distributed by	Freestyle Releasing
Release dates	October 2014 (2014-10) (Woodstock) April 10, 2015 (2015-04-10)
Running time	104 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Sisterhood of Night is a 2014 film directed by Caryn Waechter and written by Marilyn Fu based on a short story by Steven Millhauser. The film premiered at the 2014 Woodstock Film Festival.

Plot

The story begins in Kingston, New York where Emily Parris (Kara Hayward) decides to get back at her fellow classmate, Mary Warren (Georgie Henley), for ruining her audition for a school play. While Mary, forced by the theatre teacher, holds her audition, Emily steals Mary's phone and publishes all of Mary's text on her blog. Mary then retaliates by calling Emily a blog whore in front of the whole school, which landed both girls in the guidance counselor, Gordy Gambhir's (Kal Penn) office. Later that night, Mary writes on her Facebook wall that she will be taking a vow of silence, and afterwards deletes her Facebook and all other social media accounts. This is when Mary gets the idea to create the Sisterhood, and the first members she recruits are Catherine Huang (Willa Cuthrell) and Lavinia Hall (Olivia DeJonge). Together, the three girls venture out into the night, disappearing into the forest by the city border, and begin their ritual.

By the next school year, the Sisterhood has grown into a common knowledge between the girls at school, though no one except for those who are in it really knows what's going on in the woods at night due to a vow of silence each girl takes, and the girls that aren't in it want to be, but each member has to be chosen by Mary. Emily longs to be in the Sisterhood, and when a girl named Hilda gets picked instead of her, she steals the folded paper square each Sisterhood girl is presented with from Hilda's bag. She then memorizes it and makes her own version when she gets home. After figuring out the meeting place, Emily follows Hilda and another Sisterhood girl to the woods, hiding as the girls begin their ritual. While snapping a photograph, she gets spotted and is next seen lying in her bed, posting a new update on her blog. The update describes how she heard the girls chant dirty things, undress and touch each other, and then cut Emily's hand with a knife before touching her too. Later, Emily runs into Mary during Mass and proceeds to make a scene about all the things Mary did to her. Emily then faints and wakes up to Mary saying how she will never be one of them, and then leaves with Catherine and Lavinia.

Mary, Catherine, Lavinia, and the rest of the Sisterhood girls uphold their vow of silence when parents, teachers, and even reporters (who all have read Emily's blog) ask them about the Sisterhood. At the same time, two more girls come forward with the same confession that what happened to Emily happened to them as well, causing more hysteria to rise. Emily and the two girls come up with a plan on how they will get Lavinia, a fragile girl who's struggling with her mother's constant dating, to confess about what the Sisterhood is really about.

One night, Mary accidentally finds herself at the door of Gambhir's house while trying to avoid being caught for being out after the newly set curfew. She manages to invite herself in, and she talks to Gambhir. Unbeknownst to them, they are observed by Sue Parris (Jessica Hecht), Emily's mother, who snaps a picture of the two of them, assuming they're are in a sexual relationship. Mary spends the night on his couch, and is awoken by her mother the next morning, having seen the photo Sue Parris sent out. Gambhir is then fired from his job at the school, even after both him and Mary swear nothing happened. Feeling that things are starting to spin out of control, Catherine and Lavinia try to convince Mary to tell everyone what's really going on, but Mary refuses to break the vow and promises that she'll fix it. Mary then fashions the now infamous paper square, just like the ones she gives to the Sisterhood girls, and gives it to Gambhir, inviting him to see for himself. He gets Rose Hall (Laura Fraser), Lavinia's mother, to come with him, and the two of them witness as the girls do nothing but stand in a circle around a fire, sharing their secrets, hopes and dreams out loud before burning the piece of paper with their written secrets in the fire, thus keeping them a secret forever.

Emily, who has been invited to a radio show to speak about her experience of being molested, starts having second thoughts about her plan to get Lavinia to talk, and decides to pull out, much to the dismay of her two friends, who still decide to go ahead with the plan. Emily tries to call Lavinia, warning her to not go out tonight, but it's too late, as Lavinia has already been lured to the woods by Travis, a boy she has a crush on. In the woods, Travis gets her to take her shirt off, and is then ambushed by the same girls who are friends with Emily. They hold her down while putting a witch hat on her head, forcing her to say that the Sisterhood girls are witches, and then make her touch herself, all while filming it with a video camera. They upload the video to the internet, drug Lavinia, and then take her to a Halloween party. At the party, they show everyone the video and start to spread it around, all the while calling Lavinia a freak, slut, and a whore. Unable to take the pressure anymore, Lavinia commits suicide by overdosing on her mother's medication.

During Lavinia's funeral, Emily confesses to everyone that she made the whole thing up, that she wanted to be in the Sisterhood so badly and was angry when Mary refused to accept her, and she begs for forgiveness. Emily's blog is revealed to be a hoax, and Emily is persecuted. However, her blog is widely held on the basis that it had assisted an exceptional number of sexual abuse victims despite the false pretense of which it was made popular. Catherine shaves off all of her hair and visits her sick mother in the hospital (which is implied she is undergoing chemotherapy treatments). Mary and Catherine then decide to go through with a dance they had prepared, choreographed to Lavinia's original music, for school and do it in Lavinia's memory. Emily, who has finally received the Sisterhood paper square, stands at the set location and waits unsure as Mary comes up to her and invites her to join them. She then dances together with the rest of the Sisterhood girls down the streets of Kingston and into the woods. The movie ends with a narrative about how the Sisterhood will continue to be a secret to outsiders, that the secret will be passed on to new members and disappear into darkness.

Cast

• Georgie Henley as Mary Warren
• Kara Hayward as Emily Parris
• Kal Penn as Gordy Gambhir
• Olivia DeJonge as Lavinia Hall
• Willa Cuthrell as Catherine Huang
• Laura Fraser as Rose Hall
• Jessica Hecht as Sue Parris
• Grace Gray as Kandy Kane
• Steven Millhauser as Theatre teacher (cameo)
• Gary Wilmes as Principal Harvey
• Hudson Yang as Henry Huang
• Mela Hudson as Secret Sisterhood Girl
• Louis Ozawa Changchien as Stanley Huang
• Orlagh Cassidy as Linda Warren
• Deema Aitken as Travis

Reception

The film received generally positive reviews, attaining a rating of 78% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and 63% on Metacritic.

Many critics have pointed out Georgie Henley as the strong lead in the film, citing that she has come a long way from her role as Lucy Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia. Inkoo Kang of TheWrap wrote in her review "there’s no dethroning Henley as the film’s queen bee, with the "Chronicles of Narnia” actress doing a pretty good impersonation of “Foxfire”-era Angelina Jolie: sexy but open-faced, curious but scheming, intimidating but inviting."

External links

• The Sisterhood of Night' at IMDb