The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015)

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Day 120 of Sobriety.

I happened to hear about The Blackcoat’s Daughter during a podcast about the 2019 film Saint Maud. It was cited as another horror film distributed by the A24 production company that bore the common hallmarks of that company’s horror roster: dark, depressive, uncompromising. Well, I’ve had a very good experience with (I think) all of the A24 horror films that I’ve seen so far, so I thought I'd check it out. And I’m glad I did.

 

Before being picked up by A24, the film was originally titled February, and I understand that, in some territories, it still is. It was directed by Osgood Perkins, the son of Anthony Perkins who played Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho (and its sequels).  I won’t say much about the plot, because this is definitely one of those films where the less you know about it beforehand, the better, but I would recommend it to anyone who likes creepy supernatural/occult-type stories. This really got under my skin and stayed there a lot longer than I was comfortable with!

 

The bulk of the film takes place in and around a catholic boarding school for girls in a bleak, snowy February. The tone is extremely dark and moody, aided by a fantastic score by the director’s brother Elvis Perkins. (I was dismayed to see that the vinyl edition of the soundtrack only received a very limited release and now changes hands for upwards of $100.)

 

After watching the movie, I looked it up on IMDB, and was surprised to find that the reviews were almost binarily divided between people who loved it and those who hated it, with both sides being equally vehement as to its greatness or abject failure. I had no idea while watching it that it could be such a divisive movie, but I guess in retrospect, I can understand why. It is a very atmosphere-driven “slow burn” and the plot is told in a somewhat abstruse, non-linear way. The film’s detractors tended to say that nothing much happens, or that it doesn’t make any sense, while its champions claim that it is not for those with short attention spans or who need to have things spelled out simply.

 

Personally, I thought it was absolutely fantastic. Along with Hereditary and The Witch, probably one of my favorite horror movies of the millennium so far.

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