Last year, I did that Stacker Countdown Challenge. While that was enlightening, fun, and challenging in places, I also felt that it kept me from checking out other movies. I mean, there’s still my Fill-In Filmography poster, and the movies listed on that are far more varied than just the “all time best” according to some random online list. Besides, I had already seen many of those Stacker movies. If I use the Fill-In Filmography, I can go with movies I know I haven’t seen before. Plus, there have been some pleasant surprises on there. And since Max just put out what looks like a lot of A24 movies, I can check out something like writer/director Osgood Perkins’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter. I’m not sure I had even heard of it before seeing it listed on my poster.
Oh, and it stars the most recent live action Sabrina the Teenage Witch in a horror movie that has demonic presences. That’s good enough for me.
Bramford Academy in Upstate New York, a Catholic boarding school for girls, is sending everyone home for a winter break in the middle of a cold February. Young freshman Kat (Kiernan Shipka) is a bit distressed for reasons unknown while senior Rose (Lucy Boynton) is sticking around, suspecting she is pregnant, after “accidentally” telling her parents to pick her up on a later day. In another storyline, Joan (Emma Roberts) has escaped from a mental hospital and hitches a ride towards Bramford from friendly older man Bill (James Remar) and his less friendly wife Linda (Lauren Holly).
I usually use the second paragraph here to expand a bit on the plot. But here’s the thing: this is a movie that only gradually reveals what’s happening. It’s essentially working off three timelines, one for each of the young women. The first two only hint at things while the third backtracks and finishes the story off. There’s some really good, moody moments here where the camera only gives a hint of something horrifying, but what that something is isn’t revealed right away. I can really appreciate that, so I’m not saying too much more from here.
Those gradual reveals is largely something the movie does very well. A feeling of dread permeates the movie, even making things that turn out to be completely innocent seem sinister. Bill has some chats with Joan that sound like he’s looking for more than to just give a young woman a drive in cold weather. Is he going to try and make some sort of sexual advance on her? Well, no. He really is the nice man he seems to be, but the music and atmosphere that the movie projects sure does make that seem doubtful. It’s really that sort of movie where, until everything is more or less revealed, there’s a lot of doubtful stuff going on.
If anything, The Blackcoat’s Daughter might be a little too quiet and slow (odd since the runtime is only about an hour and a half), but as the movie dropped clues and whatnot to explain what was happening, it led to some nice (if horrifying) surprises. The acting is fine even if it is, Remar aside, not particularly exceptional, but this may be more of a plot-based, psychological horror, one where the final “scare” is less what a demon led a person to do, but what the person who did it seems to really think of that particular entity. That’s a different turn for a movie like this, and this is a movie with a lot of interesting turns as it is.
Grade: A-
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