The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015)

3 Stars (out of 4)

Three-Sided

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Osgood "Oz" Perkins, the son of Psycho star Anthony Perkins, made his directorial debut with this horror movie, and he seems to have arrived fully-formed, favoring a quiet, creepy, almost ethereal tone. It focuses on three young women. As a boarding school, Bramford Academy, prepares to close down for winter break, two girls remain. Beautiful Rose (Lucy Boynton) has some unfinished business to attend to; she thinks she may be pregnant and needs to discreetly break the news to the man. The younger Kat (Kiernan Shipka) is there because her parents simply didn't arrive to pick her up. She says she thinks they're dead. Rose becomes disturbed when Kat begins exhibiting strange behaviors.

Then, the third girl, Lucy (Emma Roberts), arrives at a bus station and rips a hospital band from her wrist. She's picked up by a kindly couple, Bill (James Remar) and Linda (Lauren Holly). Bill tells her she reminds him of his daughter, who has been dead for nine years. Then comes the "holy cats!" moment. Admittedly, the film's structure is more interesting than the story itself; if it had been laid out in chronological order, it wouldn't have been very interesting. But Perkins's eerie style is what sells it. It's a directorial touch that would make him a filmmaker to watch. The Blackcoat's Daughter premiered at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival, but did not receive a theatrical release until 2017, a year after Perkins's second film, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, dropped on Netflix.