Slamdance ’26: “BRB” is a Sweet Ode to Sisters, Dial-up, and AIM
Think back to the era of the shrill dial-up tone that signified the rest of the world was about to be at your fingertips. For many young people in the early 2000s, it was the sound of technological freedom. We were all little coders without realizing it, trying to perfect our Away Messages and finding ourselves on forums. It was here that the beginnings of internet communities were born. Looking back now, it’s primitive, but then it was the World Wide Web of possibility. It’s this beautifully simple era of technology that director Kate Cobb transports the viewer to in the Slamdance-premiering BRB.
Oh, to be fifteen years old again. To have a melodramatic teen drama you built your entire personality around, a sister who is your greatest adversary and closest confidante, and a profound combination of youthful self-righteousness and insecurity. While I could be talking about my own adolescence, it also describes BRB’s Sam (Autumn Best). She has an older sister, Dylan (Zoe Colletti), who she absolutely idolizes, but who won’t give her the time of day. Their parents will be leaving them alone for a few days, which frees the sisters to embark on an extremely poorly-thought-out road trip. Sam has an online boyfriend (maybe) who she’s both nervous and excited to potentially meet in person. It just so happens that he lives near where Dylan’s as-of-mere-hours-ago musician ex-boyfriend (Richard David) will be playing a show.
The dynamic between sisters is quite difficult to capture. They have to be at each other’s throats one second and sharing makeup the next. BRB’s script, from writers Michael Waller and Sydney Blackburn, lays a perfect foundation for the chemistry between Best and Colletti to sparkle. It’s an immediate buy-in from the viewer. The line, “Like you’d even care if I got sex trafficked, you basically hate me,” is hurled so confidently and casually from Best’s Sam that it succinctly underlines the dynamic at play here.
Dylan and Sam are weird to each other, mean, but also so in awe of the person their sister is. They’re so readily able to see the special things about the other, but look at themselves as though they have nothing to offer. The jabs they send are manifestations of their own insecurities. Dylan makes fun of the fact that Sam loves her soapy teen drama because she’s afraid that she isn’t sure if there’s anything she genuinely likes. A lot of her personality is built on her now ex-boyfriend and his band, but there’s a sense that she doesn’t even like his music. Sam measures her physical appearance to Dylan’s, someone far more comfortable in her own body. They each have their own means of being comfortable, Dylan physically, Sam intellectually, and on this ill-planned road trip, they begin to figure out how to bridge the gaps in their own self-love.
courtesy of Slamdance
There’s something to be said for this time in a person’s life. When one can be so confident and so cripplingly insecure, yet drive from Texas to Illinois for a boy without much of a second thought. Adults don’t do that. It gets aged out of them; shaggy reminders of spontaneity that give way to the rigidity of schedules and the nebulous idea of “real life.” BRB captures the dreaminess teenagers feel when they believe they’re getting a taste of whatever they think adulthood is. The big, candy-colored sunsets of road trips could make anyone fall in love with a guy from the internet or a boy in a really bad band. It’s only in the clear light of morning that it’s obvious these boys don’t mean much when it’s your sister in the passenger seat.
“Not everything has to mean something,” Dylan assures Sam, but her conviction is shaky. Because as emotional as these girls have proven themselves to be, they still feel the need to prove to their sister that they have everything under control. At the end of the road, that’s what BRB is about. Loving someone who can see you with a microscope and also treat you like you’re invisible. Sisterhood is a series of contradictions that BRB masterfully encapsulates in a messy road trip flick whose tenderness is undeniable.
Catch BRB at Slamdance! Visit the Slamdance website for tickets and screening information.
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