Directed By Zachary Wigon

Starring – Maika Monroe, Jason Isaacs, Ruth Wilson

The Plot – In 1858, an eccentric young governess, Winifred Notty (Monroe), arrives at the remote gothic manor Ensor House. As Winifred assimilates, staff begin to inexplicably disappear, and the owners wonder if something is amiss about this new governess.

Rated R for strong bloody violence and brief sexual material.

Victorian Psycho | Official Trailer | Bleecker Street

POSITIVES

Like Wigon’s previous film, the criminally underrated ‘Sanctuary’ from 2022, ‘Victorian Psycho’ mutually explores themes of class satire, feminine rage, and psychological duality in the frazzled context of appearance versus reality hinting at something substantially subliminal persisting just beneath the surface of its complex heroine, and while Wigon’s successor doesn’t quite stick the landing as consistently or resoundingly as his predecessor, it still provides a fascinating character study in the murky depths of patriarchal oppression that Wigon’s direction revels in with aristocratic hypocrisy, gifting audiences enough suspenseful shock and artistic awe to cement a one-of-a-kind experience stimulated by instability. For starters, Wigon’s intricate eye for immersive detail goes a long way towards tapping into the fractured mentality of Winifred’s restless conscience, utilizing a stylishly bold and exaggeratedly energetic presentational approach pertaining to Dutch tilts of the lens, contortive body mounts and desaturated color pallets to represent the curvature to reality that constantly tests the perception of its interpreting audience, in turn utilizing the influential symmetry of the lens like a character of its own within the film, in order to appraise unfiltered introspective access into the unsettling atmosphere associated with Winifred’s influence, alongside some stunning sound deposits that suggest a monstrously supernatural presence lingering beneath the character’s prim exterior. As it turns out, the film is just as much about sound as it is about sight, where not only does Wigon option for constant overhead narration from Winifred delivered matter-of-factly throughout the entirety of the narrative, attaining a majority of the movie’s manifested laughter from the authorized transparency elicited from her opinions on the experiences of interacting with upper class elitists, but also echoed roaring, increasing heartbeats, and unintelligible whispering that persist like a densely inescapable fog in the maniacal mayhem of her established mentality, all capped off rhythmically with a bizarrely discordant score from composer Ariel Marx combining shrill violins and clunky pianos to clash cohesively with the chorus of chaos that hauntingly lingers with each guiding interaction. The commitment of the twisted humor is every bit meticulously measured as it is devilishly deranged, bringing a lot of meanspirited depravity to Winifred and the rest of the characters, without directly intruding upon the integrity of the cultivated tension surmised from the occasionally deposited gruesome imagery, and though Marx’s themes don’t abide by the structural integrities of most instrumental orchestrations, instead feeling far more inherently esoteric than something typically established during the Victorian age, their deviancy emphasizes the theatricality of a sprawling stage play, establishing brooding bizarreness to gothic orchestrations that feel like a marriage made in Hell. Speaking of Gothic allure, the authenticity of Jeremy Reed’s production designs are quite effortlessly convincing to the integrity of the Victorian era, particularly those pertaining to costumes, set decoration, and on-site filming locations within the Dunsany Castle at County Meath, Ireland. As the Ensor House depicted in the film, the castle provides a claustrophobic and hyper-stylized congestion of corridors that flourishes the gothic grandeur of the 19th century Victorian excess, with twisty, plushy, and overly ornate interior decorations that emulates wealthy families preoccupied with displaying their wealth, embellishing cartoonishly in privileged indulgences so superficially shallow that they immediately convey everything that we need to understand about their detached personalities long before we’ve spent ample time alongside them, and considering Reed’s accomplishments have been thoroughly documented with British Film Designers Guild awards on films like ‘Dust Bunny’, ‘Gretel & Hansel’, and ‘I Am the Pretty Thing’, to name a few, it’s clear that he’s someone who values authentic artifacts that simply couldn’t be as easily replicated on a soundstage, accomplishing extensive immersion into the intended age, which allows so many of the realized observations of Virginia Feito’s screenplay to articulate an echoing cohesiveness with many of the same adoptable impulses that we currently feel towards an unrelatable upper class. The adapted script from Feito’s novel of the very same name is admittedly far from perfect, however it does effectively illustrate the differing psychotic tendencies of those wealthily rare when held in contrast to a psychopathic killer at the forefront of the movie’s narrative, offering unnervingly enlightening sentiments to the relatabilities of the latter that speak volumes about the outdated ideals and priorities of the former. What’s vitally important is that none of Feito’s observations heavy-handedly outline the intentionality of her impulses with the kind of meandered agenda that could oversaturate the meaning of the material, instead using them to gain a richer perspective of the up front and apparent problems that linger with an advantageous family blessed with everything, who are forced to confront their own vulnerabilities with this dangerous houseguest, and while the film occasionally lulls during an overly repetitious outline, it does lead towards an unforeseen twist during the third act that contextualizes motive to Winifred’s nightly bloodlust, leading to a gut-wrenching climax that conveys the character at her most relentlessly deranged. In the lead role of Winifred, Maika Monroe delivers an unhinged, expressive performance that Monroe has compared to “An alien pretending to be human”, featuring an intentionally inconsistent English accent and erratic ticks and nuances that convey the internalized intensity of a woman coming to grips with her slipping sanity. Monroe’s communication with the lens effectively articulates the balance of humor and menace that enact so many off-kilter mannerisms and hauntedly sunken expressions in the extensive range of the actresses accessibility to character, making her transition from resilient leading lady to chaotic killer feel seamless for this generation’s scream queen. Monroe’s lethal lead is rounded out by impactful supporting turns in everybody from Jason Isaacs, Ruth Wilson, and especially 13-year-old Jacobi Jupe, with the latter’s bratty and intuitive tendencies enabling a beyond his years kind of demeanor that clashingly collides with Winifred on many occasions, enriching a confrontational dynamic that I simply couldn’t get enough of.

NEGATIVES

On the inferior side of the movie’s execution, the script is surprisingly short-sided in its lack of narrative depth attempting to delve into the frazzled psychology of Winifred’s complex character history, where a repetitious foundation not only leaves the movie’s creativity spinning its wheels in place, for far longer than necessary, but also leaves the pacing of the second act plundered by the lack of capitalized violence to at least tie over the horror hounds in the audience. Considering this is touted as an unrelated companion piece to Bret Easton Ellis’ novel, ‘American Psycho’, there’s a baffling lack of compelling characterization to Winifred that allows her to only stand out when Monroe is ratcheting up the characteristics of her uncomfortable behavior, but even as the film expands upon some of its thematic impulses, there’s a lack of furthering to the development of these individualized arcs that leaves more to be desired to the entertainment value of the engagement, where even a briskly breezy 97-minute runtime feels extensively stretched with a screenplay that fails to elaborate further on some of its most compelling ideas, leading towards a confounding climax that fails on egregious experimentation of its own editing techniques. To be fair, the aforementioned twist in question does conjure some meaningful momentum that at least in practice should lead to a far more valuable conflict, but it’s executed with a degree of contextual sloppiness that attempts some of the interpretive impulses of ‘American Psycho’, without a basic understanding of what’s transpiring visually before us, with a dual timeline of clashing events that convolute the contextual clarity of what’s at shape, in turn delivering a disappointingly flat finale that passes audiences by without any semblance of impactful influence to elevate the conversation past its closing credits scroll, draining the payoff with a fantasy sequence layered so clumsily that it contorts the cohesion of its distinctive messaging. Finally, while not something that will bother a majority of audiences equally, there is one particularly tasteless death sequence that I wish was omitted from the finished film, especially in how it results in detracting empathetic investment away from our established protagonist. While I understand that Winifred is a psychopathic killer, first and foremost, I think there are less alienating ways of showing such a mental instability, preferably one that doesn’t grind the movie’s momentum to a screeching halt with an overly revealing sequence that left my auditorium dead silent in the awkwardness that transpired from its overstepped boundaries, and not exactly one involving gruesome gore or grotesque special effects work, but instead one involving the death of the most vulnerable character of the entire movie, leaving an unresolvable bad taste in my mouth that feels sprung from the stigma of shock horror, regardless of its restrain pertaining to implication.

OVERALL
‘Victorian Psycho’ unleashes a distinct blend of gothic horror and twisted social commentary that delights in its depraved devastation, surmising a career-defining performance from Maika Monroe to cement her status as this generation’s scream queen. While the film slashes with a gruesome spectacle that cuts especially dark and deep for expecting audiences, the uneven script, constricted climax, and tastelessly shocking sequence finds the movie losing steam at the magnitude of its manifested momentum, affording it some ambitious big swings that it doesn’t always make contact with, but still surmises the very blood-soaked bizarreness that was promised.

My Grade: 7.1 or B-