{"id":462115,"date":"2026-05-22T17:53:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T17:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/462115\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T17:53:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T17:53:11","slug":"victorian-psycho-review-maika-monroe-swaps-scream-queen-for-villain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/462115\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Victorian Psycho’ Review: Maika Monroe Swaps Scream Queen for Villain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe 21st century has yielded no shortage of stylish horror<\/a> marbled with devious veins of pitch-dark humor \u2014 Peter Strickland\u2019s\u00a0In Fabric<\/a>, Jennifer Kent\u2019s\u00a0The Babadook<\/a>, Halina Reijn\u2019s\u00a0Bodies Bodies Bodies<\/a>, Sam Raimi\u2019s\u00a0Drag Me to Hell<\/a>, pretty much every Jordan Peele feature<\/a>. Plenty of skilled directors can manipulate tension and fear while still poking us toward nervous laughter. But others end up with films in which the dueling forces cancel each other out, working as neither horror<\/a> nor comedy. Zachary Wigon\u2019s\u00a0Victorian Psycho<\/a>\u00a0is one such awkward fusion, ultimately just coming off as silly.<\/p>\n

\n\tAdapted from her novel by Spanish author Virginia Feito, the film mutes any scare factor by winking at the audience with archly exaggerated performances from an ensemble whose most consistent note from the director appears to have been \u201cGo bigger!\u201d At times, the movie veers almost into spoof territory, but it never commits to the bit enough to be anything more than a mismatched genre hybrid, despite its atmospheric visuals and strong design elements.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tVictorian Psycho\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tWe are not amused.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue: Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard)
Release date: Friday, Sept. 25
Cast: Maika Monroe, Jason Isaacs, Ruth Wilson, Thomasin McKenzie, Evie Templeton, Jacobi Jupe
Director: Zachary Wigon
Screenwriter: Virginia Feito, based on her novel
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRated R,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 41 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tA late entry into Cannes<\/a>\u2019 Un Certain Regard section \u2014 and a perplexing choice \u2014 the film will open in the U.S. Sept. 25 through Bleecker Street<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tScream queen Maika Monroe<\/a> switches teams to play the antagonist, Winifried Notty, who arrives at Ensor House, an imposing country manor adorned with Gothic gargoyles, to take up the position of governess to the two precocious children of screwy aristocrats Mr. and Mrs. Pounds (Jason Isaacs<\/a> and Ruth Wilson<\/a>).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn one of several voiceover passages that accompany chapter breaks, Winifried observes that the Pounds residence is \u201ca much more dignified house\u201d than those in which she\u2019s previously been employed, the first of many hints at the murky past she\u2019s escaping. We learn that the twins in her charge at one job went missing, that the child in her position before that drowned, and the town she hails from gained notoreity when a string of babies were found murdered.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are the faintest echoes of\u00a0Wuthering Heights\u00a0and\u00a0Jane Eyre\u00a0in the Yorkshire Moors setting. But if you start getting a\u00a0Turn of the Screw\u00a0vibe, you are being misled. Winifried \u2014 whose preferred diminutive, also the name of the demon inside her, is Fred, not Winnie \u2014 isn\u2019t the one being spooked here. Instead, she\u2019s doing the terrorizing, her unhinged creepiness apparent early on when she finds a severed ear in her bedroom and makes a snack of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMonroe slaps on the twitchy facial tics and drifts about the gloomily lit house in a state of demented distraction from the start. She\u2019s dialed up to maximum madness from the minute we meet her. That\u2019s as much the fault of Feito\u2019s adaptation and Wigon\u2019s direction as the actor\u2019s performance, but it leaves this 19th century Patrick Bateman no place to go, robbing the movie of any element of sneaky shock value.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe learn through Winifried\u2019s voiceovers that her mother tried to kill her when she was 8. \u201cYours is a soul cloaked in darkness,\u201d she told her daughter. But instead of fearing that darkness, Fred embraced it: \u201cIn any case, we are together now till the end.\u201d She was raised by a clergyman who was not her father; it\u2019s inferred that he had shady ideas about parental rights.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a funny touch of feminist commentary, the Pounds parents are intent on their bratty son Andrew (Hamnet<\/a>\u00a0survivor Jacobi Jupe<\/a>) getting the best possible education but less bothered about glum daughter Drissila (Evie Templeton). \u201cWe don\u2019t want her wasting her fertility years in some institute.\u201d When she first meets them, Fred wonders to herself about the children: \u201cAre they just quiet or stupid?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTrouble surfaces when the gardener reveals to Winifried that he knows about her wicked past, demanding\u00a0\u00a350, \u201cor some other sort of arrangement,\u201d to keep quiet. The sharp end of an axe was probably not what he had in mind.<\/p>\n

\n\tJittery housemaid Miss Lamb (Thomasin McKenzie<\/a>) proves less trouble to manage, as Fred scares the wits out of her with bogus talk of a ghoul wandering the Moors. And the Pounds clan, far from a model of respectability, have their own seedy history, nonchalantly outlined by Mr. P. when Winifried admires the family portraits dating back generations. One ancestor was executed for committing buggery with his horses, Mr. Pounds\u2019 father was a pedophile, and his mother was riddled with syphilis.<\/p>\n

\n\tAppearing to have found her depraved people, Winifried vows to claim legitimacy by becoming a member of the Pounds family and making Miss Lamb her lady\u2019s maid. But the voices inside her keep whispering, \u201cLet Fred out!\u201d That means no one is safe. Hallucinatory visuals bleed into reality as she imagines butchering the entire family. Or is it her imagination?<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Wigon\u2019s last feature,\u00a0Sanctuary<\/a>, was both playful and controlled, this one has all the restraint of\u00a0Pee-wee\u2019s Playhouse\u00a0(which I\u2019d much rather be watching). The biggest issue is that never for a minute is it remotely frightening, despite\u00a0Ariel Marx\u2019s stormy orchestral score pushing all the correct gruesome buttons. Only in a nicely done coda that wraps things up like an Olde English legend does it become devilishly unsettling.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a strong sense that Feito\u2019s novel got more mileage out of such questions as who is truly sane or insane and whether evil exists in all of us. But that thematic potential is diluted in a movie that keeps hurtling forward without gathering steam.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe entire cast is better than the material; the movie seems convinced it\u2019s a lot funnier and smarter and more disturbingly subversive than it really is. Not sure I entirely buy Monroe in villainous mode, but she gets points for throwing herself into it with deranged gusto. Isaacs and Wilson are such pros that they are amusing up to a point, chomping on the scenery with relish. But that pleasure, along with most others in\u00a0Victorian Pschyo, wears thin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 21st century has yielded no shortage of stylish horror marbled with devious veins of pitch-dark humor \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[88824,47241,173028,10532,195171,93,11311,61,60,104288,84179,30429,270,67917,51455,199384],"class_list":["post-462115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-bleecker-street","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-2026","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-cannes-film-festival-reviews","tag-entertainment","tag-horror","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jacobi-jupe","tag-jason-isaacs","tag-maika-monroe","tag-movies","tag-ruth-wilson","tag-thomasin-mckenzie","tag-victorian-psycho"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}