FEBRUARY/THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER
US, 2015, 93 minutes, Colour.
Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton, James Remar, Lauren Holly, Greg Ellwand.
Directed by Ozgood Perkins.
February/ The Blackcoat’s Daughter is a dark story (northern hemisphere February), set in a girls’ boarding school. Two students are left at school when the others go home for a break. There is some conversation about hairless nuns worshipping the devil. There is a third girl out in the weather, helped by a couple who are on their way to the school. One of the girls has an initial conversation with Fr Brian (Greg Ellwand) who works at the school – which enables the screenplay to bring him back to perform an exorcism (a touch perfunctory and brief) on the girl who has been, and will be, viciously brutal. The interconnected dramas of the girls are more arresting than the religious dimension.
1. The title, the alternate title with the focus on Joan and Kat?
2. The cold atmosphere of the film? The month of February? The school, the students going home? The snow, the bleakness? Night sequences in the cold? Travel in the car?
3. The structure of the film, the focus on the three girls, their names? The flashbacks? The intercutting of the stories? The audience finally realising the different times?
4. The background of horror, the worship of the devil, the story of the worshippers? The killings, decapitations, arranging the heads? The repetition with the drive, Joan killing the husband and wife?
5. The school, Father Brian and his absence, Kat and the mystery, phoning her parents, their not answering, the strange sounds at the other end of the phone? Her hesitant phone calls? The piano recital and the song? Her staying back? The headmaster and his entrusting her to Rose?
6. Rose, her story, concerned about pregnancy, going out with the boy, wanting to be on her own, getting her period? The interactions with Kat? Meals, grace before meals, sleep, searching for Kat, the glimpses of worship? The attack, her being killed, decapitated?
7. Kat, young, with Rose, searching her room, the photo? Wandering? Enigmatic, expecting the headmaster to arrive? Mocking the grace? With the two women, killing them?
8. Joan, waiting in the cold, Bill and his approach, the offer of the lift, with Linda? The hotel? Her sleeping? The offer of the meal? Her mysterious behaviour? In the car, the destination, Linda and the sadness of her story, Bill saying that Joan resembled his daughter? Arriving at the town, Joan killing the two, their heads?
9. Kat, the headmaster arriving, the policeman, his gun, the sinister horned aura behind Cat, glimpsed at various times during the film? Her being on the bed, Father Brian arriving, the ritual of the exorcism?
10. Joan, Kat having escaped from the asylum, the encounter with Rose’s parents – and killing them?
11. The cumulative effect of the atmosphere, the themes, the supernatural, the violence?
