Nicole Kassell’s taste for strange settings works best when the performances remain grounded. We like the attention paid to difficult loyalties in Sirens, though its comedy and its more painful material do not always sit comfortably together.
Fi1m perspective
In Sirens (2025), Nicole Kassell brings faces close enough to dominate the frame. These extreme close-ups draw on Jonathan Demme, and they suit a director interested in what people want from one another, however peculiar their surroundings become. We rate her most when she gives those wants more attention than the decoration. Sirens is an enjoyable, uneven black comedy whose three leads keep us interested when the tone slips. Meghann Fahy is its chief pleasure, but the strain between the sisters gives us a reason to stay.
Kassell co-wrote her first feature, The Woodsman (2004), a difficult character study, and followed it with A Little Bit of Heaven (2011). Television became her principal field from the mid-2000s, with The Leftovers (2014) among the programmes she directed. On Watchmen (2019), she directed the pilot and further episodes and served as an executive producer. That responsibility for establishing how a programme looks is more useful to understanding her work than counting the features she has made since her debut.
Her collaborators include cinematographer Gregory Middleton, while her preparation involves look books, detailed documents and work with department heads to establish visual rules. This helps explain why directing a pilot has become an important part of her work: she is helping decide how others will film the same surroundings and characters. In Sirens, the extreme close-ups give that planning a useful purpose, keeping our attention on individuals within the elaborate setting. The wealthy eccentrics themselves are familiar, however, and careful attention to their surroundings cannot make their behaviour surprising.
We cared about the sisters in Sirens because the promise of a more comfortable life puts a recognisable pressure on their loyalty to each other. The programme is more involving when it stays with that pressure than when it asks us to enjoy another rich person’s peculiarities. Kassell directed the first two episodes, with Quyen Tran and Lila Neugebauer also directing the series, so its pleasures and its clumsiness are shared responsibilities. Start with Sirens for Fahy and the family friction; allow for some awkward turns between comedy and discomfort.
Biography
Nicole Kassell is an American filmmaker and television director. She earned a BA in art history from Columbia University and an MFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Kassell made her feature debut with The Woodsman (2004), which premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival. She has since directed episodes of numerous series, including The Killing (2011), The Americans (2013), The Leftovers (2014), Better Call Saul (2015), Westworld (2016), Watchmen (2019) and Sirens (2025).
For her work on Watchmen, Kassell received a Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series and, as an executive producer, a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series.
