The Story
The Blackcoat’s Daughter follows three girls, Kat, Rose, and Joan. Rose and Kat are students at some kind of boarding school. The story begins when the school is on long winter break and Rose and Kat ended up staying over the break at school for different reasons. There they are faced with a mysterious evil force. Then there is Joan who is a mysterious girl who wondered into the boarding school.
The Review (Spoiler Free)
First thing you’ll noticed about the move is that it is slow burner horror film. The movie moves very slowly. There is no jump scares nor over the top special effects. But the director did a great job portraying eerie and creepy atmosphere throughout the movie using different camera angels and music.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter isn’t typical demon possession movie. It is very different. It is worth sitting through the movie because the movie has twist in the story that will surprise you. The twist is almost like M. Night’s type of twist in the story line.
After the movie, I had this really bad and creep feeling that lasted for while, which indicated that the movie was very effective horror movie.
On the side note. The Blackcoat’s Daughter was first released on 2015 in very limited release. Now they are planning to do wider release in 2017.
Acting and Directing
Acting is very good from all the actors. Kiernan Shipka who played Kat was just amazing. There is one scene when she was possessed by the demon, she had this really creepy smile which gave me the goosebumps. The rest of the main casts include Emma Roberts, Lucy Boynton, Lauren Holly, and James Remar.
The movie is written and directed by Oz Perkins. He is also son of Anthony Perkins from Psycho. Oz Perkins is known as actor turned director. He was in many popular film and TV shows such as Star Trek, Alias, and Legally Blonde.
Spoiler Ending (Spoiler Warning!!)
The big surprise of the movie is that Kat and Joan are same character played by different actors. That is something different that the director did in the movie to throw you off. But when you watch the movie closely, it is very obvious that Kat and Joan are same person in different time line.
Yes, the movie has two different time line in the story. Kat and Rose are in the same time line, but Joan’s story happens 9 years later. So you might say Joan is older Kat.
The Story goes like this. Kat and Rose decided to stay over the winter break for different reasons. Rose is pregnant and she didn’t want to face her parents. She stayed over the break to meet up with her boyfriend to break off the relationship. Kat stayed over the break because her parents never came to pick her up. We found that later on her parent was dead. Most likely they were killed by the demon. Over the break, Demon find Kat and possess her. We didn’t to see demon clearly but it reminds be of creepy rabbit from Donnie Darko. The possessed Kat killed everyone in the boarding school including Rose.
The school priest eventually cast out the demon, but she felt alone without the demon. When the demon left Kat, she called out to the demon and said “don’t go.” She was then sent to mental hospital to be treated. But eventually she escape by killing some people in the hospital. We know this because we saw quick flash back. We also know that Kat is Joan because there is one scene where she has got driver licence of some one who she killed at the hospital named Joan.
She decided to make the journey to back to school after 9 years later hoping to find the demon again. On the way back to the boarding school, she ran into Rose’s parents who are also going to the boarding school to remember death of her daughter. Irony of this meet up is that Bill, Rose’s dad, decided to help her because he thinks that God brought them together by fate. Joan eventually kills them. She felt if she kills and scarifies to the demon again, demon will come back to possesses her again. But at the end, demon didn’t come back to possesses and she cries in frustration. She realized that she’ll be alone forever.
In the Nutshell
I give 5 out of 5 stars. I know slow burner horror is not as popular. But the movie is far from boring. I highly recommend this movie.
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Profile
Genre: Demon possession
Rotten Tomato Rating: 73% / 48%
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