Bloody, bewitching, and bleak: The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015)

Review of the film The Blackcoat's Daughter directed by Oz Perkins.

I, like most horror movie fans, have been eagerly awaiting the release of Longlegs. Early reviews have called it the best horror release for 2024. As a huge horror fan (and the biggest fan of The Silence of the Lambs, which reviewers have also said has similar aesthetic and vibes), I knew I had to see this movie. But while I haven’t seen it yet (although I will soon!) I thought I’d check out director Oz Perkins’ other movies. I was intrigued by his directorial debut, The Blackcoat’s Daughter (also known as February, which I honestly think is a better title—but The Blackcoat’s Daughter has more recall, so I’ll just keep using it).

My husband and I watched The Blackcoat’s Daughter a couple days ago and I loved it. It was a visual and atmospheric masterpiece, and I need as many people as possible to go and give this criminally underrated gem the views it so richly deserves! (I’m also now even more excited for Longlegs.)

Also, this review will not be spoiler-free. So tread carefully!

Two viewpoints, two timelines

Centered around a prestigious Catholic girls’ boarding school (because, as we all know, the best horror movies are those set at Catholic schools—and I say that as a devout Catholic myself), The Blackcoat’s Daughter opens with Kat (a pre-Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Kiernan Shipka) and Rose (Lucy Boynton), the only girls left behind at Bramford Academy (loving that Rosemary’s Baby shout-out) before a week-long winter break. Rose, a senior, puts on a cool, confident air, but is hiding a secret—she thinks she’s pregnant, and has purposefully given her parents the wrong date to pick her up at Bramford because she wants more time to tell her boyfriend and decide what to do. Kat, a shy, unassuming freshman, has a nightmare wherein her parents, on their way to pick her up, die in a car crash. Both girls are shown to be desperately, dangerously lonely and afraid, with no one save a pair of disinterested nuns and, of course, themselves, for company.

Slowly, we begin to see something’s not quite right with Kat. She often stares into the distance, talks casually about her violent, vivid visions, and says disconcerting things to Rose (Kiernan Shipka creepily telling Lucy Boynton, “You smell pretty,” will forever live on in my memory). Most unsettling of all is the night Rose comes home from an off-campus party and finds Kat in the boiler room, prostrating herself before the massive furnace that heats the school.

Interspersed throughout the portrayal of Rose and Kat’s isolation at Bramford is the story of a third girl—a woman named Joan (a post-American Horror Story Emma Roberts, who continues to wow with her horror chops) who is quickly revealed to be an escapee from a mental institution, and that the name ‘Joan’ was actually stolen from a woman she’s murdered. Joan hitchhikes with a couple named Bill and Linda, learning that they’ve lost their daughter and are on their way to where she died—Bramford Academy—to lay flowers on the school’s steps in her memory.

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

Soon, we discover that Joan is actually Kat, and that there are two timelines in The Blackcoat’s Daughter. In the past, Kat succumbs to possession from a demonic figure that tells her to murder Rose and the two nuns taking care of them. She decapitates the three women and lays their heads before the furnace as an offering to her “friend”, but is caught and imprisoned in a mental institution. While incarcerated, she’s visited by the priest from Bramford Academy, who conducts a seemingly successful exorcism. Years later, she escapes, murders a woman named Joan and steals her identity, and then—through the mother of all coincidences—finds herself hitchhiking with Rose’s parents to Bramford Academy. Kat herself appreciates the irony, as shown by the disturbingly irreverent little giggle our possessed murderess allows herself in the restroom after Bill shows her Rose’s graduation photo.

Having already murdered poor Joan, Kat then murders Bill and Linda, and decapitates all three of them. She takes their heads into Bramford Academy and down to the boiler room, laying them before the furnace and attempting to summon the demon to possess her once more. But the furnace remains cold and dark. The demon doesn’t come. Broken and desolate, Kat wanders out into the snow, crying, unsure of what to do next.

Atmospheric cinematography and gripping acting

This movie’s greatest strength is its atmosphere. I live in a tropical country, and let me tell you, I felt the cold of this movie. (Note to self—go on vacation somewhere cold around February and rewatch this movie for maximum atmospheric experience.) With full disclosure that I know next to nothing about photography or filming, I have to say that this is one of the most visually stunning horror movies I’ve ever seen. The stark, bleak landscape is used to its fullest extent, with compellingly composed shots that make use of both darkness and light to really telegraph the isolation and desperation that both Kat and Rose feel.

But this movie doesn’t rest on its setting alone. Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton, and Emma Roberts deliver stellar performances that reinforce the icy, remote nature of this movie. It’s not your stereotypical exorcism film type of acting—there’s no spewing of vomit or crucifixes flipping upside down (although there’s a very unsettling scene of Kat contorting herself in bed, and a handful of instances of the c-word sprinkled here and there) but Kiernan Shipka and Emma Roberts as respectively teen and adult versions of Kat just have this absolutely unsettling air about them that lets the viewer instantly know that there’s something not quite right.

Although she doesn’t quite stand up to Kiernan Shipka and Emma Roberts, Lucy Boynton is certainly no slouch. She pulls off the outward confidence and simultaneous internal terror that is needed for a character like Rose to serve as a good foil for the demonically-possessed Kat. And one of my most favorite scenes in the movie is the moment when Rose is getting her senior pictures taken—she flashes a bright, beautiful smile at the photographer, only for it to immediately fall once her turn is over. Of course, we the audience know that Rose can just barely summon up a veneer of normalcy because she’s so worried about the possibility of being pregnant. It re-emphasizes the movie’s ultimate point: you are alone, and no one can help you.

The fear of loneliness

I consider myself a connoisseur of possession films. And honestly after a while, they all start to blur into the same exact formulaic movie. There’s an innocent (most likely female) who starts acting out and it turns out she’s possessed. A priest who’s become a doubting Thomas gets pulled in to help her and ends up having his faith restored as he performs the exorcism. And although there are some iconic movies—such as the original 1973 The Exorcist—that do wonderful things with this formula, at this point in time I find myself more drawn in possession/exorcism movies that subvert expectations while remaining intelligent.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter is one such movie for me. Although yes, there is a priest, the exorcism is merely an afterthought, performed on Kat after she’s committed her murders and has been incarcerated in a mental institution. The possession itself isn’t overt—like I said, there’s no screaming or vomiting or flipping crucifixes. Rather, there is just this slow, dawning realization of something being wrong. It’s not your usual way to approach possession, but it really, really worked for me. I felt super creeped out throughout the whole movie.

Like I said earlier, the movie’s strongest message is one of pervading, everlasting loneliness. Everything from the setting to the characters themselves telegraphs the horror of isolation. Rose is a popular girl, she has friends and a boyfriend, but in the end, she seems to be able to rely on no one to help her handle her possible pregnancy. Kat is even more lonely, seemingly having no friends and no family other than her deceased parents. Even the authority figures she seems attached to—the school priest and the headmaster—rebuff her, saying they have their own plans for the winter break. Rose and the nuns who she’s left with at Bramford Academy also have little to no time for her.

Is it any wonder that when the exorcism is performed on her, Kat whispers, “Don’t go,” to the demon as it vanishes from her sight? This desire for companionship and purpose drives her to escape and murder more people in an attempt to summon the demon once more, but this time, it doesn’t work. (Which now begs the question, was there ever a demon at all? The movie doesn’t give a solid answer.) And now there’s nothing left for Kat. The murders she’s committed mean nothing. She’s just killed more people, is on the run from the law, and is now all alone in the world with nowhere else to go and no idea of what to do next. That, more than the prospect of possession, is the most horrifying thing about this movie.

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