Maika Monroe's 'Victorian Psycho' Falls Flat at Cannes
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- "Victorian Psycho" premiered in Cannes' Un Certain Regard program — a horror-comedy directed by Zachary Wigon and adapted by Spanish author Virginia Feito from her own novel about a violent governess terrorizing a wealthy family in rural 19th-century England.
- Maika Monroe stars as unhinged governess Winifred Notty, though the review calls her miscast, conceding her twitchy body language and DP Nico Aguilar's queasy wide-angle lensing do convey the character's instability.
- The review calls the film "neither frightening nor funny enough," arguing it shows its hand early and never develops tension around why Winifred kills, leaving viewers to wait idly for the climactic carnage.
- Bleecker Street is set to release the film in late September, with the critic arguing the Cannes premiere's luster will fade and the picture will likely find its audience on VOD rather than through arthouse crossover.
- Jason Isaacs and Ruth Wilson play the wealthy employers as "posh imbeciles," while Thomasin McKenzie is "given little to do" as a nursemaid who ends quickly and brutally; child actors Jacobi Jupe and Evie Templeton play the wards, with Templeton's Drusilla singled out for a more convincingly sinister turn than the lead.
- The film wastes what the review calls its strongest assets — production designer Jeremy Reed's "ashy, expensively rotting" Gothic sets and composer Ariel Marx's "loudly grumbling" score — on a narrative the critic calls "aimless" and "all dressed up with nowhere to go."
Why it matters: For distributor Bleecker Street, the late-September theatrical release means the Cannes Un Certain Regard bow is doing most of the promotional heavy lifting — and the review suggests the film lacks the tonal commitment (genre scares or real laughs) to convert festival buzz into turnout. Genre fans may still find it on VOD, where the critic sees its likeliest paying audience.
