To make it plain, I ignore the latest in hit films and, since the media is packed with ads and promotions for movies that I consider garbage, I tend to avoid the advertising for all modern movies. This means that I often miss hearing about films that I might enjoy because of the fact that I remain ignorant of them due to intentionally avoiding the constant bombardment from vast corporations promoting their vile shit.
Thus, I missed hearing about a 2016 movie called THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER. The movie was written and directed by "Oz" Perkins (Osgood Perkins, son of the later actor Tony Perkins and Berry Berenson). Set at a private all-girls Catholic school, the story reveals itself as a particularly creepy tale of madness, obsession, and (possibly) demonic possession. Told partially in a series of flashbacks, the story unfolds slowly and effortlessly, although with a kind of cool tension.
And cold is the key word for this film. Everything about it is chilling and sterile. The setting of the film at the Catholic girls prep school is the ultimate of alienation and abandonment. Amid this frozen landscape (both within and without) we are introduced to a pair of students who find themselves trapped at the location because each set of parents failed to show up to gather the girls at winter break. (Yes, the school director attempts to locate and communicate with the two sets of parents, to no effect.) So the girls must wait to be collected by their parents for another day, during which everything changes for them both.
Kat (played by Kiernan Shipka from MAD MEN--yes, I have seen some pop culture TV now and again) is convinced via a nightmare that her parents have been killed in an auto accident and will never arrive. Rose, (performed by Lucy Boynton, an actress I had never seen before) has intentionally misled her parents to think that she is to be picked up later because she wanted to see a boyfriend before she left for home. So the two girls (one older than the other by a couple of years) are left in the silent halls with only a couple of nuns for company--the girls staying in their structured dorm, the nuns in a brownstone on the campus.
And there is the appearance of a third youthful woman (played by Emma Roberts) inserted into the plot whose story seems disconnected from the others, told in a setting that occurs several years after the initial storyline. Alone at a bus station, she's offered a ride by a married couple played effectively and coldly by Lauren Holly and James Remar (who normally delivers villainous roles, but not here).
I found both Perkins' script and direction to be exceptionally good. The feelings of sterility and alienation that he communicates via images and dialog are effective. The story he tells is also deceptively simple, which adds to the power of it as it unfolds.
If I had any criticism of it after this recent viewing, it would be that the theme of the movie could be considered routine in some ways. But again, I am a hard viewer to please, so I often find fault in most movies.
I do think the movie is engaging in most ways. Keep in mind that it is a horror movie, and an effective one. It's not a romance, and it's not a feel-good yarn. It's a horror movie, with accent on the slowly unfolding, implacable monstrosity.
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| Lucy Boynton as Rose. |
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| Kiernan Shipka as the creepy Kat. |
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