The Blackcoat’s Daughter; USA 2015; Dir by Oz Perkins; Starring Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton
All right, after a double feature of 70s weirdness and a night off it was time to check out something newer in this golden age of horror. I’d seen The Blackcoat’s Daughter kicking around on the streaming services for some time and thought I’d seen some good reviews, so we thought we’d check it out.
So the first feature by Osgood Perkins (son of Psycho’s Anthony Perkins) is set in an all girls catholic school in the desolation of upstate New York just before their February break. Kat (Kiernan Shipka - Sally Draper from Mad Men) and Rose (Lucy Boynton from 2016s vastly underrated/under seen Sing Street and 2018s Bohemian Rhapsody) are the two girls who’s parents haven’t come to pick them up in time for break. Rose, an upper classmen, told her parents the wrong day (on purpose, we soon find out, so she can go on a date). She has been tasked by school head Mr. Gordon to take freshman Kat under her wing until more parents show up to take one or both of them onto their break.
The empty school and impressively eerie score create an atmosphere of extreme unease. Add in some weird shots intercut of , well, are they flashbacks? Visions from dreams? We don’t really know. Rose is the bitchy upperclassmen annoyed with having to take in such a green freshman in Kat. But soon Kat’s weird passive, vacantness starts to creep Rose out. Soon after we meet Joan (Emma Roberts), another dyed blonde girl, who seems to have escaped from a hospital of some sort. She soon meets some hospitality from an older man (80s that guy James Remar - you know him, think 48 Hours or The Warriors) who offers her a ride as she sits in the cold night, waiting alone at a train station.
What starts out as a great, atmospheric horror movie that relies on subtlety over jump scares, invites us to go along to figure out how these two stories intersect and to make sense of the weird non-sequitur sequences that show up from time to time. The time line is chopped up a bit, and certain scenes happen several times from several different points of view.
UItimately the effect though is dissatisfying as the twist that occurs near the end isn’t really something one could figure out beyond a guess, as we are deprived information for seemingly just the sake of holding onto information and keep us confused. And it’s a shame because while it’s working, The Blackcoat’s Daughter is really effective in it’s creepy, isolated atmospherics. There are some really beautiful camera shots and very effective red herring setups for “what horrible thing is going to happen here?” and then those worst fears are not realized. Then, when one or two the horrible things that do happen in the second half, after all those false alarms, they are extremely jarring.
But the ultimate payoff under delivers in the same way anticipating a pizza delivery only to finally get the pizza cold and burnt under delivers. And it’s too bad because Roberts, Boynton and Shipka are all great in their roles.
This is the first movie in our October Horror viewing I would flat out not recommend. Viewed on Amazon Prime.
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