Winifred Notty is the most sane person she’s ever known. It sounds like an absurd sentiment in a film titled Victorian Psycho, but the more time you spend with Winifred, the more you realize that the film holds two primary truths: she is, in fact, insane, and maybe she really is the sanest person she’s ever known.
Virginia Feito’s screenplay immediately arms us with the knowledge that Winifred (Maika Monroe) is searching for something. That search takes her to the Pounds family estate, where she meets Mr. Pounds (Jason Isaacs), Mrs. Pounds (Ruth Wilson), and their two children, Andrew (Jacobi Jupe) and Drusilla (Evie Templeton). All of Winifred’s former charges seem to have died terribly, but she insists that this time will be different!
Winifred’s inner monologue plays throughout the film, often lambasting the absurdities of the rich and the mediocrity of the firstborn male heirs who face nary a challenge throughout their privileged, lazy lives. Each sentiment is shared as a matter of fact as she observes the world around her, listening to the instructions of her masters as they explicitly instruct her to make their son suitably smart and never mind the girl. Yet, as up front as she is with all of her musings — private or otherwise — it eventually becomes evident that Winifred has a secret. That secret threatens to devour her or everyone around her, whichever comes first.
As you’d imagine, Zachary Wigon’s Victorian Psycho has its fair share of kills. These murders range from satisfying to sad, with far more emphasis on the former. Wini may be crazy, but there’s only one person you have a fraction of an “aw… not them” towards as they bleed out. Every other death is earned and, typically, wonderfully practical.
That’s not to say that VFX don’t play their part here. Beyond the standard “every practical effect you see is touched up in post” of it all, as Winnifred’s sanity slips further out of the picture, the visual effects come more heavily into play. Some of them suffer from over-gloss, but none overstay their welcome as tenuous grips on reality begin to fade.
While its premise is relatively delightful on its own, Victorian Psycho lives and breathes by Monroe’s performance. The actor has celebrated a great many credits throughout nearly a 20-year tenure, but we’ve never seen her like this before. She offers a brand-new level of crazed as she glides through the halls of the manor as the governess looking for a home. From facial tics to line deliveries, whispers to broken screams, Monroe is on a different playing field than we’ve seen her on before.
The supporting characters aren’t anything to sneeze at either, but Thomasin McKenzie’s Miss Lamb and Templeton’s Drusilla stand out from the rest of the cast on the complete opposite sides of the spectrum. Miss Lamb is the sole decent human awash in a sea of mediocre scoundrels, even if she is a bit naive. Meanwhile, Templeton’s young Drusilla is a bright spot against the entitled mush that is her brother.
Thematically, Victorian Psycho offers a third-act reveal that is telegraphed in a conversation in the first act but still lands successfully for those who haven’t read the book. Winifred’s relationships with everyone around her come into sharp focus, and her final break offers a delicious killing spree that, while it lacks the brutality of her first kill, still delights those waiting to see the entitled lose their lives. If the Children (and babies) in Peril trope makes you squeamish, let me offer a fair warning in advance: you are not going to have a great time with Victorian Psycho. I’m broken on the inside, so I had a grand time.
There’s some frantic editing at play throughout Victorian Psycho that some may find grating, but its intentionality does a lot of work on its behalf. Like the VFX, sharper editing techniques come into play the more Winifred loses herself to “Fred,” the alter ego who seems to take the more brutal murders off her hands.
The film’s ending might lose some, but it’s bolstered by the fact that Victorian Psycho never tries to tell you that what Winifred is doing is okay, just that it’s (usually) earned. She did what she did, and she’d do it again, earning her a well-earned place in the “good for her” genre. Everything from costuming to set design is on point, with the makeup department earning a special shout-out for not making Wini too glossy or put together (hair has flyaways! Stop spraying everything down!).
The performances and the practical are Victorian Psycho’s crown jewel, yes, but there’s very little not to love in this frantic tale of women’s wrongs.
