The Blackcoat's Daughter

The Black Coat’s Daughter

2015

Director- Oz Perkins

Cast- Lucy Boynton, Kiernan Shipka, Emma Roberts, James Remar, Lauren Holly

From Canada

           

 

This very creepy and understated story is one of my favorites of the new millennium precisely because it is so understated. It has a small cast that gives it an intimate, personal, feel. The story centers around three girls, two of them stuck at a boarding school and one that is making her way there through a winter storm. The school is emptying out for winter break. Kat (Kierman Shipka) awakes that morning after a premonition that her parents have died in a car crash. Rose (Lucy Boyton), meanwhile has lied to her parents about what day to pick her up in order to give herself time to deal with an unexpected pregnancy. The two girls are stuck in the school with only two nuns to watch after them. Rose tells Kat about a school legend that the two nuns actually worship the devil. Turns out Rose is wrong but not by a lot.

            Kat, becoming increasingly convinced that her parents are truly dead is withdrawing. She seems a little creepy to Rose who is too distracted by her own problems to get too involved with her. We get some hints that Kat may have been visited by the Devil and later there definitely seems to be some warning signs that she is in fact possessed.

            Meanwhile, another young girl, Joan (Emma Roberts) is making her way toward the school and gets a lift by helpful man and his bitter wife (James Remar and Lauren Holly). She has flash backs that seem to indicate she has recently left a mental institution. Why is she is going to the school? What relationship does she have to Rose and Kat? We have to wait a while for answers.

            Like a David Lynch film, not a lot is spelled out. The plot is less important than the feel and the themes and it’s hard to tell you much about the plot without telling too much. One theme is that all three of these girls are parentless either by their choice or circumstance.  Another theme is loneliness, and the ends people will go to end it.  The three female leads do a really good job of bringing you into their individual story lines. Kiernan Shipka, who was 15 at the time, does an especially good job as the withdrawn and diabolically touched Kat.    

There is a pervasive sense of dread and there aren’t many moments where you can let your guard down. Part of this is achieved through the cinematography. Lighting is almost nonexistent and that has the effect of forcing you to pay attention that much more. The musical score is an eerie mixture of cacophony and dirge. Another strength is the script which doesn’t provide a lot of exposition, further drawing you in as you infer and assume. An especially interesting twist is the idea that Satanic possession while it may occur unasked for, may be voluntary, like a stranger who shows up to your house unexpected but you invite them in anyway.

            For long time horror fans, the director Oz Perkins and the score composer, Elvis Perkins, are the sons of Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins.