“Wickedly funny and gushingly bloody”
It’s always nice to see an actor or actress at work who understood the assignment. Maika Monroe, who first rose to prominence in the Cannes surprise It Follows, is back for yet another slasher, this time in Zachary Wigon’s delightfully demented Gothic horror Victorian Psycho, a perfectly lighthearted, ‘turn your brain off’ ending to the festival’s Un Certain Regard section. Playing a murderous governess with glee and perfect comedic line delivery, Monroe shines in what could be another modest box-office hit in a landscape where horror rules the manor.
When Winifred Notty (Monroe) arrives at Ensor House with a disturbing grin and a questionable British accent (it may be the period dresses, but Monroe looks remarkably like Keira Knightly in this film), she is shown the servants’ entrance. What is set up as an upstairs-downstairs period drama soon turns into a tale of murder, when the gardener that tries to extort Winifred because he knows the secrets about her previous engagements gets chopped up and fed to the pigs. Turns out that Miss Notty is a bit nutty. Swallowing his severed ear whole seals the deal when it comes to that. The snooty children she has to teach will undoubtedly follow, at least the haughty boy Andrew (Jacobi Jupe, of Hamnet fame), as will the cruel lade of the house (Ruth Wilson) and her dimwitted, leering husband (Jason Isaacs). It’s not a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’. The first one to go is surprisingly the feeble-minded nurse Miss Lamb (Thomasin McKenzie), with whom Miss Notty seems to build up a conspiratory relationship against their masters at first.
Safe to say that the film ends in an orgy of blood at the hands of the deranged Miss Notty, whose upbeat demeanor and chirpy inner monologue about slicing the arteries of babies is particularly disturbing. The evil is delivered with tongue firmly planted in cheek though, and Monroe nails the film’s tone. She knows she is evil, confessing this in a matter of fact voice-over, and being delighted in finding a dark soulmate in the family’s daughter Drusilla (Evie Templeton), whose naughty streak comes out in one of the film’s key scenes that pokes fun at the stupidity and emptiness of British aristocracy. While everyone in the cast is outstanding at the ‘comedy of manners’ that runs through the film, Monroe also excels at the craziness. She is helped by Wigon’s staging and camera work, where he doesn’t shy away from wild movement or strange angles, adding to the Gothic horror theme; at times this feels like Edgar Allen Poe on acid.
Is Victorian Psycho a great film then? Of course it isn’t. I doesn’t delve any deeper into the class differences, for instance, resorting to surface level stabs instead of full-on satire. This film is meant to entertain and deliver the blood and guts, so any thematic analysis will fall short. The bloody finale is confusing and seems to hint at Miss Notty suffering from schizophrenia, something that hasn’t come up before. But with a short 90-minute runtime, highly appreciated in a festival full of bloated, serious drama, and a screenplay full of gleefully sinister comedy delivered by an actress who knows she isn’t in some serious costume drama, Victorian Pyscho is wickedly funny and gushingly bloody.