Blackcoat’s Daughter is a frightening and overlooked horror film from 2015 that features a shocking twist at the climax. Anthony Perkins’ son, Osgood Perkins, is a well-known horror author (who is best remembered for his stellar performance in Psycho). The Blackcoat’s Daughter was written and directed by Osgood. He began his cinematic career as an actor. He has appeared in a number of films, including Legally Blonde and Secretary.
He began writing screenplays later in his career. He made his directorial debut with The Blackcoat’s Daughter, which tells the story of two Christian schoolgirls who get stuck at their boarding school when they realize that the nuns who looked after them might be Satanists! The film’s lead actors have been praised for their work and have earned numerous excellent reviews. The film’s bleak tone and mind-bending little number, which combines two horror staples: a girls’ boarding school and its wicked possessions, are masterfully executed.
But the difficulty with Blackcoat’s work is that none of those elements are utilized in the way you might expect. In this film, there are no go-all-out exorcisms or topless coeds escaping a slasher-style villain. To use the word “gradual” to describe the story of a slow burn would be a misreading of the word. It is more like a waking nightmare or meditation, the kind where you are not sure if it is even a daydream until it is over and you are back in the real world.
Blackcoat’s Daughter is a film about three adolescent girls who are tormented by the dehumanizing effects of solitude and religious tyranny. They are both students at Bramford Academy, an upper-class Catholic boarding school in New York.
When no parents arrive to pick them up during the week break from school during the harsh winter, the young academics are left and abandoned by their educational authorities. When the girls are abandoned, they all face unexpected and shocking risks, yet the ending may leave some viewers perplexed as to how different paths intersect.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter is right up there with contemporary horror films like Hereditary, which are both strong dramas and terrifyingly horrific. The film is divided into two plots, one involving schoolgirls Kat and Rose and the other following- Joan, portrayed by Emma Roberts.
Abandoned As A Child Raised By The Dark – The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015)
Kat, Rose, and Joan are the three main characters in the film. Joan is a strange wanderer whose journey interacts with the other two. Kat and Rose are both students at Bramford School, while Joan is a strange drifter whose journey interacts with the other two.
Kat’s pallor becomes increasingly unhealthy and her conduct becomes increasingly disturbing as the Bramford girls wait for their parents to pick them up for the winter break. Rose finds Kat prostrating herself in front of a bright furnace in a boiler chamber, and as Kat isolates herself from the rest of the world, she becomes increasingly fixated on Rose.
Kat wakes up from her dream and jots down dates on her calendar as she anticipates the arrival of her parents. Rose (Lucy Boynton), an older student, is concerned that she is pregnant and plans to inform her boyfriend that evening. When Kat and Rose’s parents fail to take them home before the break, Rose admits she gave them the wrong date, but she doesn’t say why; she wants to wait until she can inform her boyfriend about the fact that she might be pregnant. Because they can’t survive there forever, Mr. Gordon laughs that their parents will surely turn up.
Kat is extremely distressed, but the two nuns serving as chaperons assure her everything is ok and offers to call her parents as and when needed. Rose is asked to keep an eye on Kat that night. Rose informs Kat she’s going out that night. When Kat objects, Rose tries to calm her down by re-telling her a tale about devil-worshiping nuns at the school. She leaves Kat and drives away with her boyfriend. Kat picks up a ringing payphone in the hallway.
Meanwhile, in upstate New York, a girl called Joan gets off a bus and freshens up at the bus station restroom. She gets a vision of herself in a psychiatric facility, as she removes a hospital band from her wrist. She tries to call someone on a payphone, however, the number she dials is disconnected. As she waits for the next bus, a guy named Bill notices her and gives her a lift, much to the dismay of his wife, Linda.
In the backseat, Joan discovers a bouquet of flowers. Rose uses the bathroom after being dropped off at class by her boyfriend and hears unusual noises emanating from the boiler room, when she investigates finds Kat bowing down in front of the lit boiler, which she views through a glass in the door. Joan wakes up in a hotel. Kat’s bond with the demonic horned beast that haunts her dreams becomes stronger in the meantime.
When Rose comes back from her chat with Rick, she rests on the ground of a boiler chamber, expecting to find the creature. Kat’s sole response to Rose’s furious interrogation is that she has been left lonely because both of her parents had died. Rose is disturbed by her roommate’s sinister conduct, especially since Kat’s dreams lead her to yell and writhe violently in her sleep. Kat’s power dwindles as she gives in to her demonic tormentor’s ideas.
She takes a bath, and a gun scar on her shoulder can be seen. A police officer fires a rifle in a flashback. Bill knocks on Joan’s door and informs her that he chose her because she resembles him. He takes Joan to supper at the bistro next door, when he shows her a photograph of Rose, who turns out to be his daughter. He clarifies that she passed away nine years ago. Joan excuses herself and enters the restroom, where she laughs and recalls murdering a woman and snatching her identification card.
Joan notices Bill conversing with a cop and proceeds to steal a blade from a transit tray. Joan rushes to the car where Linda is waiting after Bill informs her they have to get on the highway to beat an incoming storm. Linda informs Joan how Bill finds Rose in each and every young girl, but she does not see Rose in Joan. Rose pulls Kat in and reassures her that her parents would arrive soon. Rose is disturbed when Kat tells her that she understands her parents are dead. Rose returns to her room and closes the door behind her with a chair.
Rose is obliged to shovel an icy driveway after Kat has an outburst at the girls’ meal with the nuns, while Headmaster Gordon comes to the institution and the nuns try desperately to cope with the problem. In Rose’s absence, Kat finally carries out the horned creature’s orders and murders the two nuns who had joined them for breakfast.
She follows Rose outside and pursues her all around the building, slashing her to death. The awful irony is that Rose is having her period as she is being pursued; she wasn’t really pregnant and had no reason to be afraid of returning home. Regardless, Kat beheads her, which Gordon discovers when he arrives.
Rose attempts to get into the chaperons’ house after shoveling, but the doors are shut, so she retreats to her dorm room. Mr. Gordon is escorted by a policeman. When he arrives at the house. Mr. Gordon clutches his face in terror as he enters the residence. Kat is shown answering the payphone in a flashback and hearing a gruff voice on the phone, which she addresses as “Dad.”
It informs her that her parents will not be arriving and that she should kill everyone. Kat is later seen murdering the two chaperons to death with a knife. Kat nonchalantly comes upstairs and reappears with two pillowcases, although one of the victims slides on the floor, mortally injured. Someone enters the bathroom but quickly exits.
She rushes back to the hall after seeing two bloodied heads covered in pillowcases on the hostel stairs. Kat appears and kills Rose by stabbing her in the back before decapitating her. Kat is discovered kneeling in front of a lit boiler in the boiler room, accompanied by the heads of the three corpses.
Kat can’t let go of her bond with the person in her hallucinations, even an attempted exorcism. She begs the sole entity that has spoken to her to stay with her after the exorcism.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter alternates between Kat and Rose’s points of view, and the added episodes portraying a third girl Joan may add to the confusion. Joan’s adventures appear to take place in the same period, but they actually occur nine years later. Joan is a phony name she adopted after escaping a mental facility and killing a woman, taking her name and identity.
She takes a stand and exclaims, “Hail Satan!” The police officer shoots a woman in the shoulder when she refuses to drop the knife.
Joan is driving both Bill and Linda in the car. Linda tells Joan that Rose was murdered in cold blood and decapitated nine years ago. Bill pulls over after Joan claims she’s going to throw up. Joan then slits Bill’s throat and kills Linda with a knife. She removes their heads and places them in a bag, which she transports to the now-boarded-up boarding school.
Father Brien meets Kat in the insane unit and conducts an exorcism on her, who is now exposed to be a young “Joan.” Kat notices a shadowy, demonic entity and invites it to accompany her, but it vanishes. Joan goes into the boiler room with the luggage on the current day, only to discover the boiler is black and cold. She walks out of the school and realizes she’s truly alone.
We just find out that Joan lives in a different timeframe than Kat and Rose at this point: Her story is set nine years after the end is shown in Bramford. Joan is Kat, so the Bramford scenes represent her recollections of the time she was forced to murder a group of people by a demon spirit.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter examines the psychological effects of desertion. Kat receives little assistance from her classmates, caregivers, or educators, and she is left to her own devices to deal with the hostile forces. Kat’s isolation not only makes her vulnerable to evil’s influence, but also pushes her to form a link with it.
As she gets older, Kat is lured back to her abuser, even if she doesn’t comprehend her responsibilities or what the ghost would do to her body and consciousness. While not as acute, Rose’s concerns about confronting her parents cause her to unknowingly put herself in danger.
The Demon Who Possess Joan
The Blackcoat’s Daughter examines the psychological effects of desertion. Kat receives little assistance from her classmates, caregivers, or educators, and she is left to her own devices to deal with the hostile forces. Kat’s isolation not only makes her vulnerable to evil’s influence but also pushes her to form a link with it. Kat is lured back to her abuser as she gets older, even if she doesn’t comprehend her responsibilities or what the ghost would do to her body and consciousness.
Rose’s concerns about confronting her parents, while not as acute, cause her to unknowingly put herself in danger. Kat, a socially shy, silent prep school freshman, is abandoned at a school hostel with Rose and a number of nuns while her parents pick her up for Christmas break in The Blackcoat’s Daughter. Her parents had died in a car accident in her dreams/premonitions, yet she impatiently marks off the remaining time on her calendar till she can see them.
As it reveals, “Joan” is actually an adult Kat 9 years after the occurrence, and she’s still yearning for the freedom and companionship she believes Satan offered her as a youngster. She decapitates Rose’s parents, whom she is traveling with, and brings their bodies back to him like an offering. The boiler room is frigid, and Satan’s presence has vanished, leaving her not just alone, and also without that sense of deliverance she so desperately sought.
Why should you watch The Blackcoat’s Daughter?
The majority of “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” is divided between two tales that only intersect in the final minutes. During the winter vacation at a secluded prep school, teen pupils Kat and Rose are inexplicably abandoned by their parents, while the rest of the students and professors vanish.
Perkins, a first-time director, displays amazing confidence in basing his frightening premise on mysteries and ellipses, effectively delaying all solutions until the last act. A great example of contemporary psychological horror. The first half of the film felt slow and monotonous, but that changed as it took on a more weird and eerie tone.
Its worth 5 stars because of its incredible sound design, beautiful surreal images, and excellent casting, which all combine to produce a highly unique, scary, and disturbing experience.
The character development is fantastic, and we can clearly see the shift from a sweet, innocent personality to a dark, insane one. The setting could not have been more perfect: an empty Church school with only two students and a handful of nuns, all in the dead of winter, creates a sense of dread that something terrible is about to happen. Kiernan Shipka’s change was eerie and sinister in comparison to her naivety.
Supporting roles were also excellent. The primary performances, particularly those of Emma Roberts (Joan) and Kiernan Shipka (Kat), are outstanding; realistic performances and terrifying character development. It’s both unsettling and fascinating at the same time. If you enjoy horror films that are “gradual and evocative,” Perkins delivers nothing but the best here.
The beautifully textured and seductive soundtrack of “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” hints at the film’s fright potential. Beyond the guttural beats of the score, white noise pierces the silence, and solitary sounds like a mournful lament and a knife piercing flesh echo, help creating an uneasy feeling.
The ending has a sharp, brutal payout that isn’t very surprising, but its cruelty is. If you can remain off the phone while watching, I recommend getting immersed in the character development and letting the ambiance and music take you on a journey. For an incredible sound design, beautiful surreal graphics, and excellent casting that combine to create a highly distinctive, frightening, and unforgettable mood. It was as if I were seeing a work of art.