1858. Winifred Notty arrives at the remote and forbidding Ensor House, seemingly the perfect Victorian governess, teaching the children table manners and educating them about their family history. But before long, staff members start disappearing, and her employers begin to wonder if she might not be quite what she appears to be.
Grimmfest says: A blood-splattered satire of Victorian high society novels and Gothic melodrama alike, adapted by author Virginia Feito from her own acclaimed novel, Zachary Wigon’s much-anticipated movie mixes literary in-jokes and allusions with trusted horror tropes, to disturbing, disorientating, darkly funny, and often outrageous effect. With a narrative that unfolds like some hell-born hybrid of Jane Austen, Daphne du Maurier, the Brontes, Sarah Waters, and Bret Easton Ellis, visuals that combine the elegant staging and high production values of a classic costume drama with the torrid tone of a gaudy Gainsborough bodice-ripper, and the cinematic self-awareness of Guillermo del Toro’s CRIMSON PEAK, and pitch-perfect performances from a fine cast, all anchored by Maika Monroe’s mischievous, full-blooded star turn as the wicked Winifred, this is a rip-roaring, riotous rampage through Victorian values, social mores, and class structures, that rattles all of the windows, kicks down all the doors, and is absolutely not to be missed.