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Bad Sister is a 2015 Lifetime Movie of the Week written by Barbara Kymlicka (and seemingly adapted from some adolescent Catholic schoolboy's delirious sex fantasies) and directed by Doug Campbell .

St. Adeline's, a Catholic high school in Southern California, welcomes a new teacher, a nun from Montana named Sister Sophia White (Alyshia Ochse). The young, attractive nun makes a splash at the school because of her unconventional ways. She doesn't lead her homeroom class in the morning prayer, and she lavishes quite a bit of attention on Jason Brady ( Devon Werkheiser ), a student who's gained a following on the Web with his music. But no one at the school is aware that Sophia is an imposter. Then she seduces Jason into a sexual relationship, frames his sister Zoe ( Ryan Newman ) for cheating, and gets Sara (Sloane Avery), a classmate who's also pursuing Jason, suspended from school, and things spin way out of control. Zoe decides to start digging to find out the truth about Sister Sophia.

Bad Sister contains examples of:

• Always Identical Twins : Seemingly averted. It's never specifically stated that Jason and Zoe are fraternal twins, but since they're graduating together, it would seem to be the case.
• Backstory : Interestingly, we don't get much of one for Sophia / Laura, just some hints in her dialogue. Apparently she has a wealthy background, was The Un-Favourite in her family, and has led a very troubled life.
• Bad Habits : From the beginning we're aware that Sophia isn't really a nun, but an imposter who's stolen the identity of the real Sister Sophia. A later flashback spells the situation out in more detail: Laura Patterson actually went to Montana to kill Sophia so she could steal her identity .
• Bad Liar : Sister Sophia's undoing. She mixes up two Montana cities (Billings and Missoula), then insists they're right next to each other (they're actually a five hour drive from each other, which Zoe points out), then her stories about her aunt dying in a hospice, which she uses as an excuse to leave school, are discovered to be false by the school's head nun. She's also woefully ignorant of church protocol, botching a line from the Lord's Prayer and not even knowing how to do the sign of the cross properly.
• Brainy Brunette : Zoe, who's not only smart and a top student but is the Only Sane Girl in the story, catching onto something being wrong with Sister Sophia long before the others do.
• Catholic School Girls Rule : The students at St. Adeline's wear uniforms, including the standard pleated skirts for girls, and resident school hottie Sara fits this stereotype well.
• Confessional : In the movie's signature scene, Jason goes to the chapel to confess to having sex with Sophia, but Sophia is the one in the booth, and she initiates another round of sex with him in the confessional !
• Continuity Nod : Whittendale College, the ultra-exclusive institution mentioned in a bunch of other Johnson Production Group movies made for Lifetime, is part of the story as the school Zoe is trying to get into.
• Dead Person Impersonation : The real Sister Sophia White was murdered and Laura Patterson is impersonating her.
• Deadly Bath : While taking a shower, Sara is startled by Sister Sophia, who murders her by bashing her head against the shower wall .
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male : A rare aversion of this. Sophia's two sexual encounters with Jason arguably constitute female-on-male rape, since she intrudes on him and acts as the aggressor. While he's depicted as having enjoyed it while still feeling hugely guilty about it, the situation traumatized him enough that he can't go through with it when Sara tries to initiate sex with him at the party.
• Dramatic Irony : The characters don't know that Sophia isn't a real nun until the climax, but the audience is made aware of it from the start.
• Elaborate University High : St. Adeline's has a bunch of detached buildings, a big chapel, and a Mission Revival-style portico. note  The movie was filmed at a large Episcopal church complex
• Evil Is Hammy : Alyshia Ochse plays Sophia to the hilt, inclduing kissing the screen of a laptop as she watches a video of Jason singing.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon : Sister Sophia, a pleasant-looking, serene blonde woman, is a cold-blooded killer and obsessive sexual deviant.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling : Hormone-Addled Teenager Jason gets enticed into an obviously inappropriate relationship with a nun, while Zoe is horrified and tries to intervene.
• Frame-Up : Sophia sticks a marijuana joint in Sara's history textbook to get her suspended from school, plants a whiskey bottle in Jason's bed, which leads to his threatened expulsion until Sophia steps in to suggest that he spend a weekend at the school to make up for it (which will allow her to finally hook up with him), and sets up a Batman Gambit to catch Zoe looking at the answer sheet of an important test (by planting the sheet in a conspicuous location in the classroom).
• Hollywood Nuns : The nuns at St. Adeline's wear their full habits.
• Hypocritical Humor : One darkly comic element is Sister Sophia sternly punishing Sara for her carnal interest in Jason, because, of course, Sophia secretly wants Jason for herself.
• The brand of lip gloss Sophia confiscates from Sara is called Toxic Tramp, which is a pretty good description of Sophia herself (and Sophia recognizes this enough to angrily destroy the bottle later).
• And her misquote of the Lord's Prayer—"deliver us from the evil one"—since she's the "evil one" that the other characters need to be delivered from in this story.
• An Ironic Name example is the villain taking on the identity of a woman named Sophia White. Sophia is Greek for "wisdom", and white is the color of purity and sanctity, and wisdom, purity and sanctity are three things she sorely lacks.
• Lingerie Scene : Several for Sophia, including at the start where she unpacks the real Sister Sophia's very conservative undergarments, followed by her own hot red lingerie. She also strips from her habit to reveal the lingerie to seduce Jason.
• Loony Fan : Turns out that psychotic Laura Patterson became obsessed with Jason's videos, and hatched a scheme to pose as a nun at his school, just so she could be close to him, going to the extent of traveling to Montana to murder the real Sister Sophia and take her identity upon seeing that St. Adeline's had hired her .
• Make It Look Like an Accident : The Deadly Bath murder is staged to make it look like the victim slipped on some soap.
• Murder the Hypotenuse : Sophia gets rid of Sara by murdering her while she takes a shower .
• The Muse : Sophia's plans for Jason are to run off with him to Paris where he can write songs about her.
• Naughty Nuns : Sophia is a beautiful young blonde who wears skimpy red lingerie under her habit, and has quite a sex drive. She manipulates Jason into becoming Hot for Preacher , but she's really not a nun.
• Never Suicide : Jason goes to his dorm room to find Sophia passed out on his bed with an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the nightstand. He attempts CPR on her, then she kisses him. She was just testing him to see if he'd really try to save her.
• Never Trust a Title : The title makes you think it's going to be a movie about a woman dealing with an evil sibling, rather than about a depraved woman pretending to be a nun.
• Police Are Useless : Not shown on-screen, but apparently the cops bought the premise that Sara died by slipping in the shower and hitting her head on the wall, despite her wounds being much more consistent with someone repeatedly bashing her head.
• Psychopathic Womanchild : Sophia is around 30 or so, but moons over Jason like a smitten schoolgirl and jealously regards the much younger Sara as a rival.
• Really Gets Around : Sara has a reputation as the school slut.
• Refuge in Audacity : Even as Lifetime movies go, this one is pretty extreme. To reiterate, it's about a psychotic woman who poses as a nun so she can pursue a teenage boy, has sex with him in a confessional , and the climax features two nuns getting in a fistfight!
• Sacrificial Lamb : The real Sister Sophia, who only appears in one flashback scene where she gets whacked (in both senses of the term) by Laura Patterson.
• Sacrificial Lion : "Sophia" is caught off-guard when Sara is allowed to return to school, so she murders Sara .
• The Deadly Bath scene is a like a twofer Alfred Hitchcock allusion, recalling both Psycho and the Nuns Are Spooky climax of Vertigo .

• Stern Nun : Sophia gets this repuation because of her hardass treatment of Sara, but she's actually targeting her to eliminate her as a rival for Jason's affections.
• Tap on the Head : How the real Sophia was murdered, and also used at the climax on Sister Rebecca.
• Villain Protagonist : The story revolves around dangerous psycho Sophia.
• Wild Teen Party : Sara hosts one and tries to seduce Jason at it.
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Directed by Doug Campbell

How long has it been since your last confession?

As a top student at St. Adeline's Catholic Boarding School, Zoe senses that something is not quite right about the school's new nun-- a sense proven to be true when it is revealed the "good' nun is an imposter with a fatal attraction to Zoe's brother.

Alyshia Ochse Devon Werkheiser Ryan Whitney Helen Eigenberg Robert Leeshock Lise Simms Sloane Avery Hugh Holub Josh Plasse Jordan Diambrini James Handy Jessica Honor Carleton Rydell Danzie Morgan Rusler

Director Director

Doug Campbell

Producers Producers

Ken Sanders Robert Ballo

Writer Writer

Barbara Kymlicka

Casting Casting

Jeff Hardwick

Editor Editor

Clayton Woodhull

Cinematography Cinematography

Joseph M. Setele

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Allan Aguilar Zack Walker Andrés Moret Urdampilleta

Additional Directing Add. Directing

David Benullo

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Timothy O. Johnson

Lighting Lighting

Philip Roxas

Camera Operator Camera Operator

James O'Keeffe

Additional Photography Add. Photography

John Rhode Eric Anderson

Production Design Production Design

Art direction art direction.

Danielle Lee

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Tom Firestone

Composer Composer

Steve Gurevitch

Sound Sound

Andres Boulton

Costume Design Costume Design

Christy Mele

Makeup Makeup

Cecilia Quezada Lauren Guzman

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Patrick Anthony Lising

Johnson Production Group Golden Oak Entertainment Lifetime

Releases by Date

24 aug 2015, 03 jan 2016, releases by country.

85 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by {Todd} ★★★½

"Oh.... it's real" - Sister Laura,

- Doug Campbell Ranked: boxd.it/bNOLO

You ever grasped a crucifix so tightly that your hands bled?

I've seen a lot of films in my life and very few of them include a full on nun fight. Though I would've loved to have someone like Josie Davis in the lead role I have to say that as a whole this film is funny and entertaining. It features all the depraved nonsense of lifetime films along with Doug Campbell's competency for watchable trash. Everything is bad in all the right ways.

It's nun-sploitation, Lifetime style.... what's not to like?

Review by robyn ★★½

nothing better than settling down on a sunday and watching a lifetime movie about a bad nun.

okay seriously this is not the best lifetime movie? but it's got a lot of crucifix clutching and red underwear so i got exactly what i came for.

i can't get enough of these 'crazy women' movies even though it goes against everything i believe irl. they are just the gift that keeps on giving.

Review by Sex Ray Spex ⚡ ★★½

Doug Campbell, you dirty dog you did it again!! A woman sees a YT video of a teenage boy playing acoustic guitar and decides she must run away to Paris with him. Time to go...nundercover (pedo edition). But the big conflict is actually that his parents do NOT support his playing of the acoustic guitar.

At one point, she gets too horny and clutches the cross so hard that her hands bleed. She proceeds to sensually lick the blood off her hands. Cut to a trickling water fountain (wet, flowing desire!!)

Luckily for everyone the catholic church does not tolerate sexual abuse and his dad even buys him a new acoustic guitar at the end and the whole family is laughing and smiling everything is totally fine

Review by SubToretto ★★★½

I am not really familiar with Lifetime movies beyond their perceived cultural trash footprint. If this is the norm, then I am all in for this particular brand of unhinged yet competently-made psychotic melodrama.

#21/95 of Summer of Trash 2023

Watch a Lifetime movie.

In fact, competent is an understatement. In parts this has some real visual style. Sure, its not style that is going to put Doug Campbell on the map as an unsung auteur, but actual thought and effort went into the lighting and compositions.

The acting follows suit in its above-average (for TV) quality, and the whole film manages to ride the line between outrageously silly and genuinely unsettling due to its inherently creepy concept.

Alyshia Ochse…

Review by Alan H 🐳 ★★★½

Disagree with the title, I found her to be an excellent sister

Review by marknum ★½ 4

Please don't judge me

"God has his way of moving us around as we need" - Dumb Sister,

- Campbell: boxd.it/bNOLO

This is exactly what Catholic school was like. Nobody freaks out and creates melodrama like a fake nun!!!

Review by Aaron Hudson ★★★½

Doug Campbell is the Alfred Hitchcock of lifetime exploitation schlock. Just look at his filmography - WALKING THE (STREETS) HALLS; DEADLY MILE HIGH CLUB; THE CHEATING PACT; DOUBLE MOMMY; TEENAGE BANK HEIST; and about 27 various flicks with the word STALKER in them. This man is an exploitation auteur - he’s never seen a situation he couldn’t sleaze, a wife who wouldn’t cheat, or a simple crystal clear plot that couldn’t be muddied up and filled in with absolute bat crap crazy.

Here, we have the the lifetime adjacent take on nunsploitation. There’s murder and mayhem, planted drugs, naughty catholic school teens, and a maybe or maybe no Nun Sister Sophia who has a penchant for teeny bopper pop music.…

Review by PRY

This movie's end credits list the cast under, 'THE PLAYERS.'

Review by b. weird 2

the nun wears a lipstick shade called TOXIC TRAMP

Review by Clare ★

Ned's Declassified Catholic School Survival Guide

Review by Beef ★★★★

THIS is what I look for in my Lifetime movies. If they were all as good as this one I would literally watch nothing else. OK, that's a lie but I'd probably watch way more Lifetime movies than I already do.

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Beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema.

A student at a Catholic school has suspicions when one of the nuns begins acting creepily towards her brother. But she can’t tell anyone, because who would believe that a woman of God would do such a thing?

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‘Bad Sisters’ Review: The Family That Kills Together (Maybe)

Sharon Horgan headlines a twisty, comic take on the avenging-women thriller for Apple TV+.

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By Mike Hale

A despicable male is found dead, and the prime suspects are a group of women who wanted to protect one of their number from his constant oppression. The killer or killers are eventually revealed; a lot of driving is done up and down a picturesque coastline. It’s the “Big Little Lies” scenario, but “Bad Sisters,” premiering Friday on Apple TV+, adds something new and refreshing to the formula: a sense of humor.

The Irish writer and performer Sharon Horgan, who created “Bad Sisters” with Dave Finkel and Brett Baer, has been behind some of the most caustically funny shows on British television this century, like “Pulling” (raucous female friendship) and “Catastrophe” (the chaos of marriage). Earlier this year, she branched out, recasting “The Shining” as a family sitcom in “Shining Vale” on Starz.

“Shining Vale” and “Bad Sisters” don’t send up the horror and avenging-women-thriller genres; they employ humor, strategically and affectionately, to give the genres new life. The 10 hourlong episodes of “Bad Sisters” (based on a Belgian series, “Clan”) tell a serious story about the damage that ripples outward from one angry and devious man, but Horgan and her collaborators use the structures of comedy to maintain energy and keep up our interest, and they mostly avoid the tendencies toward moralism and melodrama that this sort of narrative often lapses into.

The villain of “Bad Sisters” is John Paul Williams (Claes Bang), who works in the finance department of a Dublin architecture firm. We first see him in his coffin at his wake, which is where we’re introduced to the five sisters of the title: Grace, his long-suffering wife (Anne-Marie Duff), and his in-laws Eva (Horgan), Ursula (Eva Birthistle), Bibi (Sarah Greene) and Becka (Eve Hewson).

The circumstances of John Paul’s death are kept from us until late in the series, but we know that it has been ruled an accident because Tom (Brian Gleeson) and Matt (Daryl McCormack), a pair of slightly feckless half brothers who own a small and failing insurance agency, have set out to prove otherwise. If they can show that it was murder, they won’t have to pay off on the life-insurance policy that Grace holds.

Their stumbling but bullheaded progress — they’re like low-rent cousins of Edward G. Robinson in “Double Indemnity” — is one of the show’s clever comic storytelling devices. The investigation they carry out is remarkably effective, largely because no one gives much thought to talking with them, and the audience is always a step or two ahead in putting together the facts they’re uncovering.

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• A student at a Catholic school has suspicions when one of the nuns begins acting creepily towards her brother. But she can't tell anyone, because who would believe that a woman of God would do such a thing?
• From the first time Zoe met her new teacher at St. Adeline's Catholic School she knew something wasn't right with Sister Sophia. Was it the red lipstick and refusal to recite the Morning Prayer? Or the way she eyed her brother Jason...like he was dessert? As Zoe's suspicions grow so does the creepy bond between the "good" sister and her brother--a bond bordering on seduction. But who will believe her? After all, Sister Sophia is a woman of the cloth. Or is she?

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Season 1 – Bad Sisters

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Dark secrets are a family affair in Bad Sisters , a riotously funny murder mystery that makes fine use of its gifted ensemble while exemplifying creator and star Sharon Horgan's penchant for salty warmth.

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Bad Sisters review: Sharon Horgan’s dark, bonkers comedy will have you rooting for a clan of murderous women

This new series, adapted from belgian thriller ‘clan’, introduces an enchantingly charismatic set of irish sisters all plotting against one abusive man, article bookmarked.

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John-Paul Williams is a bad, bad husband. He’s belittling, controlling, physically imposing. He exclusively calls his wife “mammy”, even in front of company. In other words, he has to go. Mercifully, when we first meet him in the new Dublin whodunnit Bad Sisters , he’s already dead – a fact that doesn’t keep John-Paul, played with cultivated smugness by Danish actor Claes Bang , from posthumously threatening to tear his family apart.

The Apple TV + miniseries from Catastrophe co-creator Sharon Horgan occurs across 10 enthusiastic episodes and two hilariously interwoven timelines – one that precedes JP’s untimely demise and a second that follows from it. In the earlier timeline, JP’s four sisters-in-law plot how to extract their diminished fifth sister Grace, an aching Anne-Marie Duff , from her gaslighting husband. In the second timeline, they scrabble to hide their misdeeds from a couple of pesky suits looking for any excuse not to pay out John-Paul’s life insurance policy.

The darkly bonkers premise is ripped from a 2012 Belgian thriller called Clan , but it’s Horgan’s writing and the performances of the ecstatic ensemble who play the bad, bad sisters that provide the series’ real kicks. Horgan is the fiercely protective matriarch – the one who drinks enough to say what the others are thinking. Sarah Greene ( Penny Dreadful ) plays one-eyed Bibi, her faithful lieutenant, and Eva Birthistle ( The Last Kingdom ) is excruciating to watch as Ursula, a dissatisfied nurse and mother. Becka, played by Behind Her Eyes ’ Eve Hewson (Bono’s daughter), is the free-spirited baby sister who, even as an adult, suspects she’s been relegated to a metaphorical kids’ table.

JP’s awfulness is too relentless for his death to be very lamentable, and the Garveys are so enchantingly charismatic together that it’s impossible not to root for them, even when the game is homicide. “You’d have an easier time offing the bloody Road Runner,” Horgan’s Eva quips when JP escapes yet another attempt on his life. The conflict between the sisters is either comic (Eva is dismayed when Bibi complains of hunger on a JP stakeout) or the deep-rooted kind that happens when people who know each other tread where they shouldn’t. If Horgan’s sensational BBC Two sitcom Motherland , about a cabal of middle-class London mums, is a study in icy, convenient female friendship, then Bad Sisters is about the profound lifelong bonds that can grow in place of so-called healthy boundaries. These orphaned adult sisters can’t be themselves unless they get their Grace back.

The series debuts with a two-episode premiere, followed by a more traditional one episode a week schedule. I generally favour an old-school slow leak of episodes, but even I must admit the sharp, chummy world Horgan creates here would make a terrific binge session. Honestly, if it meant I could spend more time in their warmly murderous clutches, I’d watch the Garvey girls go after the Road Runner next.

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‘baby brother’ review: superb performances and audacious style anchor a brutal portrait of generational trauma.

Michael J. Long's debut feature, premiering at the Oldenburg Film Festival, depicts the relationship between two siblings attempting to overcome their troubled home life.

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

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Baby Brother, set in Liverpool, is not easy viewing for a number of reasons. Firmly in the tradition of Britain’s kitchen-sink realism movement, the gritty drama features copious amounts of brutality of both the emotional and physical varieties. It is also demanding of the audience in its storytelling, depicting two separate days years apart and alternating between black-and-white for the past and color for the present.

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The story revolves around the relationship between Adam (Paddy Rowan) and his younger sibling Liam (Brian Comer), who don’t exactly enjoy the benefits of a happy home life. Their mother (Julia Ross), who struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, is the sort who screams “Get a job or get out!” to Adam when she’s been drinking. Their stepfather is violently abusive, at one point holding a kitchen knife to her throat in front of her sons.

The brothers nonetheless enjoy a close relationship, their propensity for mischief depicted in a very amusing scene in which they sneak into a theater during a rehearsal and engage in mockingly pretentious banter analyzing the performances. Adam is deeply protective of Liam, who dreams of becoming a professional fighter. And he works hard to earn extra money to compensate for the money their mother spends on drugs, even cutting the grass of an elderly neighbor. But he’s ultimately unable to prevent himself from spiraling into violence and addiction as a result of his troubled environment, eventually paying a heavy price for it.  

The filmmaker, working from a screenplay co-written with Tom Sidney, delivers a searing portrait of the sort of generational trauma that is all too common when financial struggles are thrown into the mix. Despite the constrains of an obviously very low budget, the film looks terrific, thanks to David Short’s versatile cinematography that proves equally striking in both B&W and color.

Both lead performers are superb, especially in their skillful delineation of the ways in which their characters have changed or not in the five-year interval. Rowan is particularly haunting in the contemporary scenes, displaying the pathos of a man who’s realized his inability to control either his or his brother’s fates. Baby Brother ends on an ambiguous note, but only the most optimistic viewers will be able to see a bright future for these figures beaten down by life, both literally and figuratively.

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