September Says

In her directorial debut September Says, French actress Ariane Labed - known for her roles in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Alps and The Favourite - steps behind the camera for the first time, offering an audacious and cerebral adaptation of Sisters, the award-winning novel by British author Daisy Johnson, often heralded as the heir to the dark, literary legacy of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King. What begins as a familiar descent into classic horror (with an unmistakable nod to the eerie twins of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining) soon morphs into something far more complex and emotionally intricate.

The film centers on two sisters, September (Pascale Kann) and July (Mia Tharia), who, though not twins, share an almost psychic bond. Separated by just ten months - reflected in their evocative names - their relationship is tense, symbiotic, and fraught with undercurrents of both love and control. Labed deftly manipulates this close, mysterious connection, crafting a chilling atmosphere that simmers with latent energy. Collaborating with cinematographer Balthazar Lab, who captures their unsettling world on grainy 16mm and 35mm film, Labed immerses viewers in the sisters' claustrophobic interiority, where the line between the tangible and the surreal blurs effortlessly.

The film’s setting, an isolated family house, becomes a character of its own. Sinister sounds echo through its hallways, flickering lights pulse with a life of their own, and an ominous sense of foreboding seeps into every frame. But as the story unfolds, the question arises: Is the house truly haunted, or are the sisters unraveling under the weight of their own psychic entanglement? September, the older, more assertive sibling, strives to control both the eerie events and her introspective younger sister. But when July finds herself falling in love, their precarious dynamic begins to fracture, revealing layers of trauma, grief, and long-buried secrets.

With September Says, Labed transcends the traditional horror framework, skillfully subverting genre conventions to explore deeper emotional terrain. Her film is a haunting, atmospheric meditation on the fragile boundaries between reality and illusion, waking life and dream. It’s a strikingly original debut, marked by an intuitive grasp of the psychological tension that lies at the heart of true horror.