Blackcoat’s Daughter, The (2017)
Staci Layne Wilson
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Starring Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton, James Remar
Directed by Osgood “Oz” Perkins
The Blackcoat’s Daughter would have fit right in in the mid- 1970s. It’s got a similarly unsettling vibe to Picnic at Hanging Rock, with a touch of The Tenant thrown in – but director Oz Perkins is no Peter Weir or Roman Polanski. (At least, not yet.)
The dreamily eerie story follows Kat (Kiernan Shipka) and Rose (Lucy Boynton), two teens who are left alone at Bramford boarding school over winter break when their parents mysteriously fail to pick them up. While the girls endure increasingly strange occurrences at the remote mansion, another teenage girl, Joan (Emma Roberts), is alone on the road. For unknown reasons, she is determined to get to Bramford as quickly as she can. As Joan gets closer to the prestigious Catholic academy, Kat is plagued by intense visions, with Rose doing her best to help her friend as she slips into the grasp of a supernatural force. The movie builds to the moment when the two stories will intersect, but by the time that happens less-persistent viewers may have already signed off.
I have seen all of Perkins’ films, both as a writer and as writer-director. As a director he has an arresting visual style, but little command of suspense. I like him much better as a writer (check out Removal and The Girl in the Photographs, written by Perkins and directed by Nick Simon). I think I would have liked The Blackcoat’s Daughter much better had it been helmed by someone other than Perkins. Still, the script and story are undeniably compelling.
Kudos must go to the cast. Shipka (“Mad Men”), Boynton (“Sing Street”) and Roberts (“Scream Queens”) are all riveting onscreen, as is the adult cast (James Remar and Lauren Holly). At times, each of them seems possibly evil – but there can be only one villain in this story, and you’ll be kept in the dark until the very last moment thanks to a solid script and ace acting.
The score (by Elvis Perkins, the director’s brother) is subtle and spooky, while the cinematography (by Julie Kirkwood, who did an absolutely amazing job on The Monster last year) is bleakly beautiful.
A lone hitchhiker, a grieving couple, two abandoned girls on the verge of womanhood, and a religious school are all thematically promising ingredients for subverting taboos, but Perkins is too cold and controlled to let the hellfire crackle. While The Blackcoat’s Daughter is intriguing and seductive at the start, in the end it doesn’t quite live up to the insinuations it made in the beginning.
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Film
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