‘Victorian Psycho’ Is a Head-Tilting Delicious Ride [FANTASTIC FEST REVIEW]

A Delicious Story of Revenge

Winifred Notty is a woman looking for answers. When we meet her in Zachary Wigon’s film Victorian Psycho, she is a slightly off governess for a family. Mr. and Mrs. Pounds (Jason Isaacs and Ruth Wilson) have two children who need to be taught. A young boy named Andrew (Jacobi Jupe) and Drusilla (Evie Templeton). Andrew is on his way to boarding school but Drusilla is meant to just get through life, as women do.

But with a teacher like Winifred, they’re in for a class like no other. There is just something different about her that slowly reveals itself as the film goes on. Based on the novel of the same name by Virginia Feito, who also wrote the screenplay, the film uses an off-kilter lens to make everything feel eerie. And as the film goes on, you learn more and more about Ms. Notty and why exactly she wants to be in the Pounds’ home.

What makes this more than just a strange girl story comes from Maika Monroe’s performance as Winifred mixed with Wigon’s creative camera angles and the beautiful cinematography that Victorian Psycho weaves in.

Maika Monroe Is a Horror Legend

Monroe is someone that fans know for her work in horror. From It Follows to her collaboration with Osgood Perkins in Longlegs, she cemented herself as an ideal final girl. But Victorian Psycho gives her something new to sink her teeth into. Kind of…literally in this case but that’s for you to get when you finally get to watch this twisted tale.

A lot of the film focuses on Winifred’s time with the Pounds family and features her voice over weaving the tale of her time there. But even when things seem normal, Winifred’s actions make this just a little too unnerving to ever actually relax enough to find yourself lulled into any kind of sense of security. Which is different from Monroe’s past work. Even in Longlegs, where we did question things about Lee Harker, we still knew that she was attempting to solve a case.

With Victorian Psycho, from the jump you know that Winifred Notty is truly someone who you would not want to come in contact with and it makes so much of this movie a fun ride to watch.

For the Dark and Twisted Girls

Whenever a horror movie puts a female at its center, it can go one of two ways. It can be “for the girls” or it can be an absolutely unhinged performance. Both can be said about Victorian Psycho. Winifred is the kind of character that you do wish could have anything she’s ever wanted and that’s a kind of fun energy to watch this film with.

The key to a movie like this is to embrace its oddity. If you try to project something onto Victorian Psycho, then it isn’t going to work for you. But when you embrace what Wigon and Feito are doing with Winifred’s story, it is absolutely breathtaking and twisted in the best way.