The Blackcoat's Daughter

Ticked quite a few boxes for me; slow and moody buildup, a soundtrack that's 50% ambient drones, effective cinematography with a good cast in dreary locations. Still, once you put everything together the plot kinda falls short, and jumping back and forth in time can't quite gloss over this aspect. But being low-key, slow-burn horror instead of jumpscare CGI shit was good enough for me at this point in (space)time.

Anthony Perkins' kid does this. David Cronenberg's son did Antiviral. David Bowie's boy did Moon. Meanwhile, Renny Harlin's kid keeps trying to helm a remake of Lake Placid 2. They should all get together and do an anthology film based on the short stories of Joe Hill.

"Meanwhile, the Sally Draper spinoff took a dark turn..."

Catholic school girl-on-girl action so hardcore that you'll need an exorcism to cleanse your shorts by the time the ending credits roll. Yeah, the Blackcoat's Daughter is not actually anything like that description, but I like to imagine it was. I've been told I have a good imagination.

Disjointed and dull with a score that sounds like mosquitoes and broken speakers. I'm honestly mad at myself for sitting through this garbage.

While the plot isn’t very ambitious, The Blackcoat’s Daughter (February) is a well acted and directed film with a good score. Although best viewed expected a slow burn dark drama instead of horror.

Goes from nowhere to nowhere

Ingeniously structured triptych about grief as abandonment trauma, featuring a disjointed temporality that doesn't engineer a twist so much as it affords increasingly horrific clarity about what's happening & the narrative(s) a terrible, ironic sense of inevitability. It's about finding surrogates in the wake of loss; the horror derives from our vulnerability in that state & our loneliness ("Don't go..."), our sense that someone who has experienced such a loss has become "a different person."

I appreciate the pacing and shooting style. The lack of dialogue allowed for good tension and the music while overdone was appropriate without being too obnoxious. That said the movie was pretty obvious and the jumping around which was supposed to reveal mysteries were just drawing out things we already figured out.

Starts dark and only gets darker. It's out there a little ways on the "odd" spectrum. A must watch if you're into indies or just really like watching these 2 ladies act. They do an amazing job.

Places 100% emphasis on mood and tone. A real slow burn with great atmosphere. The plot is a bit too thin and I seriously doubt the script was longer than 45 pages

I genuinely think this is not trying to be an elevated horror or some shit, but just a shot at renovate the girls-only boarding school stuff. Three leads are awesome, acting more with their tense bodies to equally restrained shots than with the not so interesting script structure. Also, the suggestion that Don Draper's daughter is actually falling in love with the Devil is more powerful than the ritual itself -- dead people's heads as an offer to Satan near the basement's oven.

Perkins masterfully creates an unnerving creepy environment in this all girl's boarding house. From the start you know something is off with the people in this setting but you just can't quite put your finger on it. There are layers upon layers of eerie and subtle visual details used to create this surreal atmosphere. It is a decidely flawed film but the dread and acting excels far beyond the usual horror genre schlock.

i guess as anthony perkins' son you're prone to "psycho"-logical horror. there's also lots of reminiscience to classics like "the shining". here and there, oz may have overshot a bit stylistically, but the finale is engrossing and rewarding. along with egger's "the vvitch" one of the more memorable and worthwhile entries in the genre, featuring a cast of really promising young actresses. especially shipka shows great versatility. if these things were about talent, she'd be one to look out for.

It's a slow and subdued film, but it's almost unbearably tense, building suspense through the gradual accumulation of detail, it's dark visual tone and a really wonderful score by writer-director Osgood Perkins's younger brother Elvis Perkins. I saw the film's final twist coming, but it still had quite an impact.

A familiar possession/devil worship story anchored in heavy suspense and three exceedingly well-played characters. Those with a low tolerance for atmospheric horror and ambiguity will hate it, and to a certain degree, there may be some minute truth to claims that "nothing really happens," but the moodiness is so viscerally felt, and it harmonizes so perfectly with Shipka's unbelievably smart (and eerie) performance that I can overlook many of its issues common to other indie horror movies.

Avoiding spoilers, I loved Joan's journey, her painful cries echoing that path of an addict, a person who has burned every bridge, bitten every helping hand, so far lost that even the familiarity of the addiction can no longer ease the ache. Perkins reach matched his grasp in The Blackcoat's Daughtrr and it was a harsh look into the abyss, frightening and awe-inspiring.

Dreary, dull and intentionally confusing to hide the yawn inducing straightforward run of the mill horror story. I couldn't mine any enjoyment from it, but i tried. +5 for Shipka because she's Sally Draper

Great cinematography, pacing and narrative structure.

Atmospheric and well-directed.

Builds an effective, eerie tension that evokes a mix of bizarre Lynch and claustrophobic Polanski, and while Shipka and Roberts are never required to “perform” per se, both provide fascinating and vaguely unsettling presences (Roberts’ final scene is impressive by any standard). A shame that the film never cuts loose and provides a worthwhile resolution for the tight wind-up, well and truly stripping the groove into frustration in the final act. A still interesting if unsatisfying effort.

60

Viewed September 21, 2017.

The simple and under-developed story is elevated by great performances, solid direction as well as unconventional and effective narrative structure and editing.

This was an interesting movie, I wouldn't call it good per se but I was intrigued and entertained which is enough for a one-time watch.

Dug it mostly for vibes (and honestly I could watch 90 minutes of Kiernan and Emma just furrowing their eyebrows), the plot itself ends up pretty nonsensical, and the script elides so much information in pursuit of (appreciated) ambiguity—and setting up some reveals that I think were probably evident much earlier than intended—that the whole thing feels kind of hollow and weightless. Like, I get what happened, but... why?

The approach of this film is refreshingly unusual. I wasn't quite sure what was going on at first, but stuck with it and am glad that I did. Like most great stories, less is often more and the viewer is left to interpret events and motivations. There are some nicely placed moments of misdirection and the climax occurs unexpectedly. All of the other components come together nicely to create a film that will linger in the viewer's mind.

Might have to do a re-watch to understand the timeline but overall it's rather good

I don't know what it is about this film, but it's just... awesome. What Oz Perkins does with story and scenery.. the feeling is both comforting and anxiety-inducing. This film stands as my perfect definition of the "SLOW BURN" film. Love it!

Acting, camerawork, and atmosphere were great. Plot lacks substance, but is still interesting.

100% sure that I need to see this again.

Good atmosphere and acting but little dull and predictable.

It makes more sense after reading other people comments after the movie.

Rating from memory. Was a highlight of the festival I saw it at a couple years ago; glad it's finally getting distributed. Heavy atmosphere, very spooky (obvious kin of It Follows, The Witch), though I remember feeling like it didn't make a whole lot of sense, or at least was more obtuse than it needed to be.

Idle Hands remastered, but serious. And artsy. And more like the Babadook, but, unlike the Babadook, it's recycled garbage.

I'm on the fence about this one. While the core story is fundamentally eyeroll-inducing, it's presented in a compelling and interesting way. The problem is that it's all style and no substance.

I'm not sure what happened, if anything at all. Some nice atmosphere and some nice Mika Levi style score and it's interesting to see Kiernan Shipka again, but in the end it's more style than substance

I typically enjoy a good slow burn. This was not one I could get into. I actually stopped and picked it up another night. I can appreciate what the director was going for, but it just wasn't for me. Kiernan Shipka was pretty solid, so perhaps is worth viewing for her performance, but it's at the bottom of the pile for me. 2.8

There's a really neat twist on the old possession/exorcism/"The Irish Ballad" idea somewhere in it. Unfortunately Perkins slathers on the faux-Lynch atmosphere so thick that you have to work to find it and fill in the blanks the script leaves yourself.

There was a lot to like here; the eerie style reminded me of Lost Highway -era Lynch. I respected the slow buildup which worked in the film's favor, making the ending quite brutal. I also thought Kiernan Shipka did a pretty good job and given the right material, she could do even better. The winter-y setting is also a plus. The script came a bit short though and could have used some more tweaking as it doesn't quite come together as well as it could. Still worth a watch for horror aficionados.

I never found the classic body-bending, deep-voice-cursing, devil-possessed girls to be scary or interesting. The cinematography and acting were alright, but lacked anything that would make this movie worth your time. The vague plot and lack of focus made this movie feel too much like a student film.