Victorian Psycho

SHE HAS EXCELLENT MANNERS. TERRIBLE IMPULSES.

It is 1858.

Winifred Notty has a new job.

She is expected to teach children their table manners, instruct them in the history of their family and behave with the restraint expected of a respectable Victorian governess.

There is one complication.

Winifred is a psychopath.

In Zachary Wigon’s Victorian Psycho, Maika Monroe plays the eccentric young governess as she arrives at Ensor House, a remote gothic manor occupied by the Pounds family. As Winifred settles into the household, members of the staff begin to disappear.

Eventually, the owners start wondering whether their new governess might have something to do with it. 

They are not exactly quick learners.

And that is part of the joke.

Unlike a mystery built around discovering the identity of a killer, Victorian Psycho puts its central psychopath right in front of us.

The suspense isn't really who.

It's what Winifred is going to do next.

The movie comes from Virginia Feito’s 2025 novel of the same name, and unusually, Feito adapted her own book for the screen. 

That matters because the story’s tone depends on a strange collision of things that normally shouldn't fit comfortably together:

Victorian propriety.

Class resentment.

Sexual repression.

Black comedy.

And murder.

Wigon has described his interest in genre as a way of reaching extreme states of psychology and emotion rather than simply obeying genre conventions. Speaking at Cannes about Victorian Psycho, he discussed wanting cinema to push toward the fullest possible expression of a character's interior life. 

Winifred gives him plenty to work with.

She is constrained by a world obsessed with behavior while carrying impulses that reject almost every rule holding that world together.

The setting makes that contradiction sharper.

Victorian society is built around surfaces.

Manners.

Dress.

Hierarchy.

Speech.

Knowing one's place.

Winifred can perform the surface.

What happens underneath is another matter.

Maika Monroe plays Winifred in a performance very different from the quieter, inward characters associated with films such as It Follows, Watcher and Longlegs.

Monroe herself has said that she had never played anything remotely like Winifred before, describing the character as far more outward than her usual roles. She also cited Jack Nicholson in The Shining as a major influence, particularly the way Nicholson smiles through Jack Torrance's unraveling. 

That grin matters.

Winifred doesn't necessarily look miserable while the world around her falls apart.

Sometimes she looks delighted.

Alongside Monroe, Jason Isaacs plays Mr. Pounds, Ruth Wilson plays Mrs. Pounds, and Thomasin McKenzie plays Miss Lamb. The ensemble also includes Jacobi Jupe, Evie Templeton, Amy De Bhrún, Katherine Moran and others. 

Behind the camera, Nico Aguilar served as cinematographer, Ariel Marx composed the score, Jeremy Reed handled production design, and Dustin Chow and Lance Edmands edited the film. 

Production took place in Ireland, with Anton producing alongside Traffic and in association with Anonymous Content. 

The film made its world premiere at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where it screened in Un Certain Regard on May 21. 

And that premiere produced one particularly useful clue about what kind of movie audiences should expect.

This isn't simply a grim period serial-killer film.

Festival coverage repeatedly describes it as a mixture of gothic horror, satire and black comedy. 

That makes sense.

A governess quietly eliminating people inside a perfectly respectable Victorian household is horrifying.

But there's also something inherently absurd about everyone continuing to observe social etiquette while the staff roster keeps getting shorter.

The comedy and horror come from the same place:

repression.

Everybody has rules.

Everybody has a role.

Everybody knows what proper behavior looks like.

Winifred simply stops caring.

The film was originally scheduled for a U.S. theatrical release on September 25, 2026, but Bleecker Street subsequently moved it to November 13. Current theatrical listings from AMC, Rotten Tomatoes and distributor tracking now agree on the November date. 

So as of September 12, this is firmly a Coming Soon title.

Which means Friday Night VHS doesn't need to pretend we've seen what happens inside Ensor House.

We know what Cannes has documented.

We know what Bleecker Street has released.

We know Winifred is dangerous.

And we know the staff has begun disappearing.

Everything beyond that can wait until the doors open.

For now, the table has been set.

The children are waiting for their lesson.

The governess is smiling.

And somebody in the house is about to discover that good manners are not the same thing as good intentions.

Winifred Notty has excellent manners.

The rest of her needs work.