Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"The Blackcoat's Daughter" (US title, the better one in my opinion) or "February" (UK title) is a Canadian 90-minute movie from 2015, in the English language of course, so still a relatively new movie that soon gets a DVD release here in Germany I think. The director and writer is Oz Perkins, son of Anthony Perkins, and this is his first directorial effort as he was a prolific actor until now mostly. With Remar, Holly, Roberts and Shipka, he got a pretty decent cast together, the 3 ladies are for example very famous for their small screen acting (Mad Men, NCIS, American Horror Story). But back to this one here. The film includes two core story lines who seem to have basically no connection almost and also seem to take place during very different times, there is a huge gap between these, so it is not a chronological story at all. The one thing I want to say here is that I am a huge Kiernan Shipka fan and everybody who has seen her on Mad Men will have a hard time making a case against her being the most talented actress under 20 right now that Moretz and Steinfeld have passed that mark. And she also did not let me down here. Luckily, the longer the film goes the more she moves into the center of it all and definitely elevates the material on several occasions. There is one phone scene in particular where she really shines with her face expressions. I think she really combines dedication and vulnerability so well that I am positive we will see a lot of greatness from her in the coming years, probably decades.The rest of the cast was okay too. The acting really wasn't the problem here and I even liked Emma Roberts and I am usually not too big on her. The problem is the execution though. It is all quantity over quality. Almost every scene is supposed to be scary and creepy and it quickly becomes annoying. There is zero build-up and as a consequence also almost zero good moments. The few jump scares did not really add anything either. I am sure Perkins sees a lot more in this film than audiences do. But he just did not get his vision through, mostly with his writing, but also with the direction. In my viewing, I even heard people laughing at how bad it was at times and that's the only explanation as there are 0% comedy in here unless you c(o)unt the unexpected and random inclusions of the c-word. The exorcism scene near the end is the best example. It is a really crucial moment, but it feels rushed in for the sake of it as Perkins is puzzling together snippets that have worked in horror films over the last years, decades even, but it's never more than snippets. They are not really fitting together. The music, score, soundtrack (call it whatever you like) is not helping either as it added a great deal of negativity to the showy over-the-top way in which basically every scene should be memorable, but the opposite was achieved, namely that the memorable moments became forgettable. Not even the atmospheric take was successful with the (almost) empty school. Or the reference about the burned hair of the two women, which was there, but never picked up on again. It was truly shoddy to watch at times. There was such a good opportunity for a quality film here given the cast, but they definitely missed out on it and the outcome is a great example of how script is key and even strong actors cannot make a weak story work. I give these 1.5 hours a thumbs-down and suggest you watch something else instead.
