It’s winter break at Bramford Academy, but nobody is coming to pick these girls up. Don’t worry though, they definitely won’t be alone.
It’s fair to call The Blackcoat’s Daughter a slow burn. Its success is not born of big scares or loads of carnage, although there is a little of that, but rather comes down to a chilling atmosphere, top notch acting and direction, and a thematically rich plot. The setting, a boarding school that is dormant for winter break, offers plenty of darkness and open space to menace the girls left behind after their peers have all gone home. The primary protagonists are Rose, an older girl played by Lucy Boynton with the world-weary affectation of a teenager desperate to squelch any remnants of her childhood naivete, and a freshman named Kat, played by Kiernan Shipka, who I’ve been a big fan of since Mad Men. In a show full of career-defining performances, her Sally Draper stood out among the best, and she doesn’t disappoint here in a challenging and nuanced role. There are a few different plot threads going on simultaneously that are clearly related, but figuring out precisely how they are related makes for an interesting watch. The movie gives up the game about halfway through, although I’m not sure how much of that was intentional versus just a lucky guess. I’m confident that there are enough breadcrumbs that most viewers will find their way there before the movie lays it out for them explicitly. Regardless, I was pretty captivated throughout, and those central performances, plus that of Emma Roberts as a mysterious hitchhiker, were a big reason why. Even if I saw the mechanics of how the plot would play out on a grand scale, it was the revelation of the characters’ motivations that still surprised me and kept me thinking about the film after the screen went black.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter is strong enough to watch on a surface level, but its real weight comes from what it says about gender politics and our society’s inherent power structure. The girls at the center of the movie are frequently shot so they are swallowed up by shadows, or squeezed to the edge of the frame, representing their marginalized standing in society. Every scene between male and female characters highlights the power dynamic, whether overtly like the male headmaster and his subordinates, or more subtly such as a subplot that makes it clear which gender bears the brunt of culpability for an unwanted pregnancy. There is also a predatory subtext to many of these interactions, like when one of the ostensibly well-meaning male characters has a conversation, fully clothed, with a young woman in a towel. Nothing untoward happens, but we are meant to feel her vulnerability and recognize the threat, even though we believe this to be a good man. That character, played by James Remar, seems to represent religious authority, or at least Catholicism, given the way his dark collar is parted to reveal a white undershirt in the manner of a priest’s neckband. He is, quite literally, a father, and he’s seeking to shepherd a lost soul that he encountered. I don’t want to get into spoiler territory, but the film explores what it’s like to be a girl living in the type of patriarchal society represented by a Catholic boarding school (but that really extends far beyond those confines), and how attractive any form of control or agency would be, even if its source is Satan himself. In many ways, it feels like a companion piece to another 2015 movie with similar themes, The Witch. That film won the critical lottery that year, relegating The Blackcoat’s Daughter to the sidelines, but I found this to be the superior film. Recent horror flicks tend to be so overt with their metaphors that it’s hard to watch without rolling your eyes, or so subtle as to be opaque. It’s rare that a movie comes along this challenging and thoughtful, yet presented in a way that I was able to make the connections in real-time. This was a highlight of the season for me.
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