Victorian Psycho (2026): A Period Piece Slasher

I loved Virginia Feito’s novel going in, so I had a lot riding on director Zachary Wigon sticking the landing here, and for most of the runtime, he does. In 1858, an eccentric young governess named Winifred Notty arrives at the remote gothic manor Ensor House, and as she settles into life there, the household staff start disappearing one by one while everyone slowly, belatedly starts wondering if something might be a little off about the new hire.

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Maika Monroe is the whole show here, and she is completely game, fully committed to Winifred’s descent into open, gleeful madness in a way that feels genuinely fearless. There’s a running joke buried in the premise too, and as a teacher myself, it landed harder than I expected. Governesses, teachers, that whole professional class of educators, are always stuck in between, upstairs and downstairs at once, belonging to neither, and Wigon mines that liminal space for both comedy and dread. Monroe is doing a whole goofy bit with the physicality of the role, and it’s very clearly, very deliberately a bit, right down to the voiceover, which stays remarkably faithful to the book’s tone and most of its content. That said, the film could stand to trust itself a little more. If Wigon let a beat breathe for just a second longer before landing his punchlines, the comedy would hit even harder. Give that audience just a bit of wait time. They always reward you.

Visually, this thing is a genuine achievement. The camera work has a slightly filmy, leathery texture to it, all these goofy, exaggerated close-ups shot through what feels like a wide-eye lens, giving the whole movie a woozy, off-kilter perspective that mirrors Winifred’s own unraveling grip on reality. There’s a shocking lack of cutting for a film this visually ambitious, a real embarrassment of riches when it comes to oners. The entire film is beautifully lit, genuinely gorgeous to look at scene to scene. The fire effects used throughout the manor’s rooms are a particular highlight. Not everything works.

Thematically, the film gets real mileage out of the household’s rich hubris, and it’s not subtle about drawing a line from Victorian-era wealth and cruelty straight to how we live now. There’s also a small, recurring visual tic, a head tilt that pops up again and again across the film, and once you clock it you can’t stop noticing it. Monroe channels a little bit of Brad Pitt’s unhinged energy from 12 Monkeys in some of her wilder moments, which feels like exactly the right reference point for a performance this committed to going for broke. Eat the rich, or at least their ears.

The sound design is one of the more curious elements. There’s a strange sonic scoring choice running through several key scenes that genuinely intrigued me, though I couldn’t always tell whether the oddness was intentional or just an unusual mixing decision. Either way, it adds to the film’s off-balance atmosphere. This is a movie that isn’t trying to be anything other than exactly what it is, a gleefully gory period piece midnight movie, and it wears that identity proudly. I hope it finds its audience, because it deserves one, even if it’s a pretty niche one by design.

Where the film stumbles a bit is the final act. The problem is the film doesn’t have quite enough of its earlier pop and comedy left in the tank to soften an emotional shift, so the back stretch drags in a way the rest of the film never does. That said, the framing of the ending itself is genuinely, wonderfully creative, and it left me thinking about the film’s final image well after the credits rolled.

Victorian Psycho is Maika Monroe doing go-for-broke work in a film that mostly matches her energy, stumbling only when it should be sprinting toward the finish. Zachary Wigon clearly loves this material, and that love shows in nearly every frame. Victorian Psycho makes its North American Premiere at Fantastic Fest, running September 17 through 24 at Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, ahead of its theatrical release later this month. This is exactly the kind of unhinged, committed genre swing Fantastic Fest crowds show up for, so seek it out.