Gothic horror is going from mad to madcap with Victorian Psycho, a horror comedy that follows a murderous governess to her next — and possibly last — appointment.
Maika Monroe stars as Winifred Notty, a governess who is desperate to make a good impression on her new employers, the Pound family. The broad strokes of the plotline are tropes of Gothic horror. A seemingly fragile young woman must care for the young, defenseless children of a rich and twisted family. At night, strange noises might be heard about their grand house. The family's treasures go missing or are vandalized. Members of the staff vanish without a word. Could it be a ghost or ghoul whose very presence could drive this poor heroine mad? Well, no. Because from the very start, Victorian Psycho shows us its protagonist is already mad, and also the vicious thing that goes bump in the night.
The title alone gives some clue of the topsy-turvy approach that Virginia Feito, who wrote the novel and this adapted screenplay, has to the genre. Director Zachary Wigon (Sanctuary) cements this cheeky attitude with an opening scene in which Winifred addresses the audience in voiceover while looking straight into the camera. There's a sense of Fleabag in this distorted direct address to the audience, as Winifred insists she is the sanest person she's ever met.
This is just the first red flag, warning that Winifred Notty is much more than naughty. Soon after, a dismembered human ear tumbles out of her luggage; she regards it with slight irritation. From here, Victorian Psycho blooms into a deliciously bonkers spin on gothic horror with an eat-the-rich edge.
Victorian Psycho blends gore, goofiness, and class conflict.
On the surface, Winifred seems a darling young woman, eager to be accepted into a household that'll appreciate her. She's demure when meeting the servants of the Pound estate, as well as the family themselves. Among them, there is a mightily mustachioed father (Jason Isaacs), a fearsome mother (Ruth Wilson), teen daughter Drusilla (Evie Templeton), and the spoiled little heir to the family fortune, Andrew (Hamnet's Jacobi Jupe).
But there's a spiky antisocial undercurrent to Winifred, especially when she's left alone with the children. She speaks of the wickedness and pain that lie inside all living things, frightening the young Master Andrew, who watches in shock as she bludgeons a fallen deer to death with a rock. Still, few around her could imagine what horrid secrets she's left behind her, and what deranged fantasies fuel her dark heart. She swiftly befriends the children's nurse, Miss Lamb (Thomasin McKenzie), and offers to this wide-eyed waif tales of a ghoul that's prowling the property. For how else to explain the blood all over Winifred's dress?
When it comes to Winifred's violence, Wigon is unblinking in brandishing spurts of blood but knows when to keep certain especially heinous homicides off-camera. This keeps the tone of Victorian Psycho thrillingly zany, despite the grim content.
As for Feito, she seems to pull inspiration from Jane Austen's brilliantly dummy dialogue for oblivious rich folk. These are caricatures of entitled affluence. The father bloviates about the value of phrenology, a pseudoscience that proposed personality could be predicted by skull shape. The mother punishes a scullery maid by chopping off the girl's long hair after a strand once ended up in her soup.
Like with Saltburn, there's a delicious lunacy to watching these careless rich assholes embrace an outsider who's sure to bring them to ruin. Not all of Winifred's targets feel as worthy of her brutal brand of comeuppance. Still, the breathtaking cruelty is part of the fucked-up thrill ride.
Maika Monroe gives a career-best performance in Victorian Psycho.
The American actress's career has been largely defined by horror since she broke through in 2014 with a supporting role in the gripping thriller The Guest and then starred in the STD-as-slasher allegory It Follows. Though she's done a slew of films since then, horror offerings like Watcher, Longlegs, and The Hand That Rocks The Cradle stand out. Yet here, she's turned from haunted heroines of her filmography and gothic horror in general to become a compelling monster all her own.
Typically, in these types of stories, like Crimson Peak, The Others, or The Turning of the Screw, the heroine is an innocent with good character and bravery in the face of an inhuman threat. Here, Winifred is that threat, and Monroe makes a meal out of playing the baddie as if she's been starving for the opportunity (though, yes, she's been the villain before).
There's an electrifying mix of menace and mischievousness in her delivery, whether she's flirting with the nurse or threatening a child. Her face shifts smoothly from a mask of civility to a reveal of wrath or revulsion. However, when Winifred gives over to her dark side, Monroe's performance ratchets into a gnarled physicality of demonic possession, which will likely remind viewers of Lily-Rose Depp's turn in Nosferatu. On top of all of this, Monroe offers a sharp humor through unhinged physicality that cuts deep as a shattered tea cup shard through a jugular.
Victorian Psycho offers fantastic WTF moments.
In scenes where Winifred is spiraling out of control, high-angle cinematography from Nico Aguilar distorts her proportions, turning this beautiful woman into a warped stranger. Whip pans, rarely used in period pieces, snap from a could-be victim's expression of shock to Winifred's face, and it can feel like a slap to it. But the gnarliest visual choices are when Aguilar gives a point-of-view of objects of violence, like the aforementioned dismembered ear or the rock used to fatally brain the deer. Such choices not only throw an exciting manic energy into Victorian Psycho but also force the audience to feel a part of the action, either to be gobbled up by Winifred's all-consuming darkness or party to it.
Composer Ariel Marx embellishes this tone of creepy complicity with a score studded with familiar and strange sounds. You might hear a plunking piano or stinging strings, common instrumental choices for gothic horror. Sometimes, there are slippery sounds (maybe a theremin? Or a saw being bowed?) and distorted voices, perhaps the cries of babies. These aural collisions of the expected and unexpected reflect how Feito and Wigon build on the bones of gothic horror, but create something more modern with their mesmerizing murderess.
In the end, Victorian Psycho is a hoot, wildly fun, and unapologetically deranged on its surface. Then, just beneath that, Feito, Wigon, and Monroe weave a tapestry of class conflict, sexism, and trauma that urges audiences to probe deeper to understand that while Winifred is a monster, she was not born one. Instead, she was made from a society that regards cruelty as another luxury the ultra-wealthy get to take for granted. Well, that is, until someone reflects it back.
Victorian Psycho was reviewed out of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival; it will open in the U.S. on Sept. 25.
