“Victorian Psycho” is Notty by name and nasty by nature

Victorian Psycho

Starring Maika Monroe, Jason Isaacs, Ruth Wilson, Thomasin McKenzie, Jacobi Jupe and Evie Templeton. Written by Virginia Feito from her novel. Directed by Zachary Wigon. Opens March 13 in theatres everywhere. 102 minutes. 14A

⭐️⭐️ 1/2 (out of 4)

Peter Howell

Movie Critic

A familiar tune from “The Barber of Seville” accompanies the closing credits of gothic thriller “Victorian Psycho,” evoking Bugs Bunny, but the wascally wabbit’s mischievous style of mayhem is evident long before then.

Creepy comedy is the aim and the exuberant outcome for star Maika Monroe, whose unhinged performance gives wicked life to the vision of director Zachary Wigon and screenwriter/novelist Virginia Feito, although there’s more blood than chuckles.

Scream queen Monroe, usually a sane character amid the madness of such films as “It Follows” and “Longlegs,” plays wickedly against type as title maniac Winifred Notty. She’s the unforgiving new governess for horrid 19th-century English family the Pounds, who make the vile Dursleys from the Harry Potter tales seem positively pleasant.

It’s 1858, and Winifred arrives at Ensor House on the Yorkshire Moors with an air of propriety and a devilish grin. Notty by name and nasty by nature, she’s been hired by sketchy toff Mr. Pounds (Jason Isaacs) and his fussy wife (Ruth Wilson) to teach manners and family history to their bratty children, Drusilla (Evie Templeton) and Andrew ("Hamnet" discovery Jacobi Jupe). A nurse, the aptly named Miss Lamb (Thomasin McKenzie), also serves the household.

Notty can barely manage her own worst impulses, as we soon learn when she gobbles whole a severed ear she bizarrely finds in her bedroom. She’s just getting started.

Staff members begin disappearing as her employers start wondering whether they should have checked her references more carefully. Victorian propriety conceals plenty of ugliness, and the Pounds have more than their share; their new governess threatens to bring it all into the open.

The main joke here is that Winifred’s insanity doesn’t necessarily make her a poor judge of everyone else’s mental health.

On the contrary, those of us whose heads haven’t been severed by an axe may find ourselves nodding in agreement with her voiceover assertion: “I’m the sanest person I’ve ever met.”