Polite Society’s silliest fight was inspired by a horror movie

Teen aspiring stuntwoman Ria (Priya Kansara), the star of Polite societyreacts reasonably when her family arranges a marriage between her beloved older sister Lena (Ritu Arya) and a devious man: Ria wants to thwart the engagement and beat the man up.

That might seem like a hyperbolic response to growing pains, with Ria turning her fear of losing Lena into an excuse for Matrix-style fighting. But Lena’s mysterious fiancé Salim (Akshay Khanna) and his imposing mother Raheela (Nimra Bucha) seem to be up to something really nasty, with Ria and her loyal friends as the only people who can save Lena from her doom. Director Nida Manzoor weaves it all into an action-packed comedy that’s as much about kicking ass as it is struggling with big life changes.

One of the most brutal fights in the whole movie is not between Ria and her enemies, but between Ria and her sister. The confrontation begins as a simple sibling argument, but eventually escalates into the sisters slamming each other into walls and going completely through a door, disintegrating under the impact. It’s chaotic, gory, unashamedly brutal and absolutely over the top. (Meanwhile, Ria and Lena’s parents, loitering downstairs, just sigh and tell them to clean up the mess they’re making.)

“It was one of my favorite scenes to film,” Manzoor tells Polygon. “I found it incredibly cathartic to write everything with these two sisters.”

Random objects in Lena’s room become unexpected weapons in the fight, from a picture frame to a heated hair straightener. Lena’s nursery is just as much part of the action of the scene as the two girls, something Manzoor felt was especially important.

“I was also very inspired by Jackie Chan movies,” says Manzoor. “And what he does is really use his environment in combat. It localizes and grounds a fight scene, as he uses bits and pieces from the set. That’s why I wanted the hair straightener. I wanted a picture frame with those two in it [turned into a weapon], and use the door. It inspired me to ground the struggle in its truth.

For all battles Polite society, Manzoor reflected on her favorite action movie sequences. One scene she kept returning to was the fight between Morpheus and Neo in 1999 The Matrix, a scene that she says introduced her to choreographer Woo Ping Yuen and the world of Hong Kong cinema. She also quotes Daryl Hannah and Uma Thurman’s confrontation Kill Bill Full. 2where they wreck a caravan while trying to take each other out, and a scene in it Hay wire where a fight between Gina Carano and Michael Fassbender rips a hotel room apart.

“[Carano] has real physicality that we often don’t see when women are cast as action heroes. They don’t always feel they have the physical strength to do the things they do,” says Manzoor. “I was inspired by that. I wanted my actors to do as many stunts as they could on their own. I wanted them to fully embody those fight sequences and for it to feel true to the artist. That was important to me.”

But the fight that really kicked off the sister-on-sister action for Manzoor came from Julia Ducournau’s cannibal horror drama Raw. In terms of genre, the body horror movie differs greatly from the coming-of-age comedy action vibes of Polite societybut both films are about a pair of sisters and the brutality of in Raw‘s sister fight really resonated with Manzoor.

“There’s a brilliant sister battle,” she says. “It’s kind of a horror version of it, but it’s like they’re biting each other — bleeding and biting pieces apart. And I remember I was like, Wow, I really feel seen by this insanely violent fight. This made me feel empowered to go even further with my sister’s fight.

Polite society is in theaters now.