As the son of Anthony Perkins, Oz Perkins certainly has a horror/psychological thriller pedigree. His directorial debut, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, aims for a measured, less gaudy approach to the genre, building suspense through slow pacing. Those efforts, however, merely drag out the film and draw even more attention to its clichéd moments. “Mad Men”‘s Kiernan Shipka turns in a chilling performance, but the acting overall is pulled down by Perkins’ middling dialogue and lack of genuine twists.
The setting for Blackcoat’s is adequately haunting, with a dark, almost empty Catholic boarding school named the Bamford School hosting much of the plot. There, two students, Rose (Lucy Boynton) and Kat (Shipka), under the care of two nuns, await the arrival of their parents. Everyone else has gone home for break. Rose suspects she may be pregnant, promiscuity never boding well for characters in horror films. Kat dreamt of her parents’ car covered in blood and prostrates herself in front of the basement boiler and hears voices. That set up in and of itself is compelling.
A separate, intercut story involves Joan (Emma Roberts), a young girl who seems almost destitute and with a freshly removed medical wristband. While crying at the bus station, she draws the attention of Bill (James Remar), who offers her a ride despite his wife’s (Lauren Holly) displeasure. Joan is going to Bamford, her trusting aides headed in the same direction. Initially, no reason is given by either as to why Bamford is their destination. As they ride on, Bill reveals more about himself and his daughter’s grisly fate. Joan offers very little personal information but is captivated by the gruesome tale.
There’s nothing wrong with being clear about who your antagonists are, but Perkins doesn’t leave much to the imagination. Most plot points are obvious, foregone conclusions. And, especially since Blackcoat’s doesn’t concern itself with clear reasons for its characters’ actions or backstories for Kat or Joan, the audience has little to go on and few reasons to connect with these characters. Starting with the fact that Shipka and Roberts are given the same hairdos, the connection between these two characters is clear from the beginning. The only question that remains for the audience is the particulars of that connection. Perkins’ ambiguity in his finale doesn’t seek to answer that.
Perkins attempts to build a structural juxtaposition within his script, alternating between scenes with Kat and those with Joan. The lack of momentum in the latter, however, makes the story only feel like it drags on and on. Bill’s story comes to life in Kat’s scenes, but having a summary unfold simultaneously with the action, or even after the fact, feels awkward and somewhat clumsy at times. That, combined with how Perkins withholds information in an attempt to create a “shocking” final twist, shows poor structure in the script as a whole.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter nails its creepy atmosphere but struggles to do anything more. As a debut, it shows Perkins’ understanding of basic psychological slasher horror tropes, but a good horror film needs to be more than a sub-par rehashing of old standbys. The Kat storyline is the strongest, but even then, Perkins could have gone all-out slasher or put even more emphasis on her dubious mental state. There are missed opportunities, certainly, but hopefully in future efforts Perkins won’t sacrifice coherence and scares for a structure that doesn’t hold water in an already predictable story.
The post The Blackcoat’s Daughter appeared first on Spectrum Culture.