Much respect to A24 Films for bringing new kinds of
horror narratives to audiences—especially ones focused on female experiences.
Their latest, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, fits right into a lineage already
populated with Life After Beth, The Monster, and The Witch, and its trio of
actresses build believable, impressive suspense. But the tension the movie
creates is unmatched by its underdeveloped plot, which relies on a big reveal
that is disappointingly obvious.
The movie begins at Bramford, a remote girls’ boarding
school in upstate New York, where winter break is just around the corner and
the students are preparing for an end-of-year performance that their parents
will attend before they go home for vacation. Nearly everyone is excited to escape
this dingy, dark facility for a while, to get away from the dirty snow, the
plethora of crosses, and the desolate atmosphere. But two girls don’t seem
quite so happy at the idea of leaving: freshman Katherine (Kiernan Shipka) and
upperclassman Rose (Lucy Boynton).
Each of the girls seems to be hiding something from the people
closest to them. Rose, who fears she might be pregnant, is afraid to face the
reality that she might be expecting with a boyfriend who automatically assumes
that she’ll be getting an abortion; Katherine, plagued by nightmares of
something terrible happening to her parents, is afraid to share the visions that
are disturbing and haunting her. When the two end up alone together at school
over the break, the headmaster tasks Rose with taking care of the younger Katherine—but
something about the latter girl gives Rose, who tries to scare her with talk of
devil worshipers and warns her to stay away from Rose's bedroom, the creeps.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter then cuts to
another storyline, this one focused on Joan (Emma Roberts), a young woman we
meet trying to rip off her hospital bracelet in a bus station bathroom. She
keeps having flashbacks to some kind of mental institution—masked men hovering
above her, nurses handing her pills—but she’s determined to get to Bramford,
too. Her motives for going to the school aren’t shared, even after she gets
picked up by middle-aged married couple Bill (James Remar) and Linda (Lauren
Holly), who agree to take her there. But they’re talking in riddles and secrets
to each other, too, like when Bill asks Joan if she believes in God. Her answer
is no, but Bill won’t let it go—raising the question of whether he can be
trusted or if he’s just another man trying to tell Joan what to do.
How these two storylines link up is the main twist of The
Blackcoat’s Daughter, and it’s a little disappointing how easily the movie
gives the big reveal away early on; the action moves so slowly that you can’t
help but pay attention to every little thing, and the clues can’t be ignored.
That saps the movie of some of its forward momentum, which is already languid
to begin with; things only really ratchet up in the final half-hour.
Nevertheless, there are creepy moments throughout that
really add to the stylistic, haunted-house atmosphere of this whole narrative: the
silhouette of a being lurking the hallways of the school; a giggle from Joan at
a moment of horrendous pain for Bill and Linda; Rose tip-toeing to the boiler
room as she follows what sounds like children’s murmurs in the dead of the
night.
Shipka has the showiest role, and she handles it gracefully. How she obviously
spaces out of conversations with elders, refusing to make eye contact but maintaining a fake kind of pleasantness, brings to mind her excellent years as Sally Draper
on Mad Men, and her face when she calls a nurse a “cunt” after vomiting at a
breakfast table instead of leading a prayer is delightfully shocking. Boynton
does well balancing the bitchier moments of her character with her teenage
vulnerabilities, and Roberts effectively harnesses her usual blankness. The
performances are strong throughout.
But still, The Blackcoat’s Daughter feels slight; the
story needed more padding, more exploration into what happens to the girls, and
a clearer distinction of what drives their motives to truly be distinctive.
There are brief forays into the kind of behavior that makes teenage girls so
unknowable to their elders and even their peers (a recurring use of mirror
images and the word “pretty” gives us a glimpse into how these girls view themselves
and how they want to be viewed), but the movie needed more of that to truly
flesh out who these characters are. Shipka, Boynton, and Roberts give all they
can to The Blackcoat’s Daughter, but the success of their performances isn’t
enough.
RATING:
2.5 OUT OF 5 GUTTENBERGS
