Siblings are everywhere on screen: sometimes allies, sometimes rivals, sometimes little more than background figures, and often central to the story itself. Yet, despite their ubiquity, cinematic siblings remain surprisingly under-examined.

Screening Siblings in Contemporary American Film offers the first sustained analysis of how sibling relationships have shaped some of the most influential films of the twenty-first century. Exploring popular films such as Bring it On (2000), Legally Blonde (2001), Frozen (2013), Jurassic World (2015), and Black Panther (2018), Katie Barnett uncovers how contemporary cinema uses sisters and brothers to explore gender, family, grief, and identity. She shows how teen movies use siblings to construct 'safe' romances for girls while reinforcing older brother gatekeepers, how depictions of sororities both challenge and reproduce dominant ideas of femininity, and how on-screen fraternities reveal anxieties around troubled masculinity.

Barnett also explores how siblings, particularly twins, are utilized in contemporary horror to explore parental failure, grief and disturbed identity, and how representations of dysfunctional adult siblings are used to address loss and the impact of family identity on the self.