I watched The Blackcoat's Daughter.
Also, I've already spoiled this movie for myself and watched a recap, before even seeing the movie. But I watched the whole thing anyway.
This post is all over the place because this movie is all over the place. It's told in non-chronological order. Lots of time jumping.
Kiernan Shipka plays Katherine.
It's about two girls alone in a boarding school, two nuns watching over them, another plot thread involving a young woman named Joan and her desire to get to a certain town, and a demon that links the two stories together.
It opens with a schoolgirl named Katherine. She has a dream of a wrecked car. A strange man comes in and out of her room. The movie shows her sleep, then awake, then sleep again. But I think she actually is supposed to be sleep when they're showing her as awake in the morning scene. The strange man, who you can't even see the face of BTW, is with Kat as she views the wrecked car in her dream. The truth is that her parents are dead. She doesn't know it. And she's eager to see them. RIP her happiness.
The strange man is supposed to be the demon, I think.
Anyway, Katherine lives at a boarding school. The weirder she gets, though, she actually wants to live at the boarding school. Even though she can't, because her parents are dead. IDK. This is a bit hard to explain. But if her parents are dead, she can't live at the school anymore. Which is actually the case. Either way, Kat spends some time not knowing her parents' fate. And the viewer (us) doesn't get explicitly informed that her parents are dead. We don't even know how they die. Car crash, apparently.
This movie is weird. Some of it is pretty vague. There's aspects of this movie that make it seem "empty". Like it's lacking something. The whole film is "off".
Spoiler alert. Kat is Joan, who is intent on reaching that town. It's actually the town where the school is. Joan is an escaped mental patient. In there for the murders of Rose(former schoolmate) and the nuns(old ladies who worship the dear Lord above) Joan actually gets Rose's parents to take her near the town, then she murders them. She wants to please and reunite with her headmaster (the demon) It's not referred to as the headmaster, but it's pretty much Joan's master. So the word fits.
Long story short, the demon is gone. Because Joan was exorcised of it when she was still a teenager at the mental institution. Funny thing is, some fans of the movie think Joan/Kat was just schizophrenic. But she literally floats above her bed during the exorcism. How tf can you explain that in a non-supernatural way?
Anyway, take a shot each time someone says headmaster. Especially Kat.
Teen Kat is at the school during break. Her parents didn't come(they're dead) Rose is older and meaner. She's there too. But she thinks she's pregnant because she missed her period, and she purposely set things up so she could stay at the school for break too. She wants to avoid her parents. Rose wants to avoid everyone. She's really aloof and it's hard to like her. The girl isn't even pregnant. She doesn't even takes a pregnancy test. Just jumps to conclusions.
Her actress is Lucy Boynton. Young British lady. She mimics an American accent. I am trash at noticing accent slips, but even I noticed her accent slipping when her character is talking to Kat in her dorm room. When she's getting ready to see her BF(not baby daddy) In one sentence, the first few words sound very British. Haha.
"You know I'm not babysitting
you tonight right, Freshman?"
That line. You can really hear Lucy's British accent there.
Rose and the nuns were arseholes. It's hard to care when Kat murders them. Rose's mom was cold too. You only feel a bit bad when Rose's dad gets killed. Because he was the only decent person in this movie.
1 One thing I didn't like about the movie is its lack of heart. I prefer seeing affection and genuine care between characters in media I consume. TBCD didn't have that. These characters were acting so cold and distant. I hated that. Rose especially.
2 Lowkey horror. There's less excitement here. Less scary things happen. It's really slow.
3 Adult Joan and teen Joan(Katherine) are the same person, but I don't get the sense they're the same person. They have the same hair, and same gunshot wound, but they don't even seem like the same person.
4 Joan's scenes were pretty boring. Somehow her first scene at the bus station and her last few scenes were the ones I liked of her the most.
5 It's not explicitly said what happened to Kat's parents, which is annoying. But it's implied they died in a car accident. We never even see them.
6 I don't want to call this movie boring, but it's definitely a lot less intense. Most of the good stuff happens near the end.
7 The lack of humor. Nothing to laugh at in this movie. Just coldness and creepiness.
1 I love how more deranged Kat looks as the movie goes on. Eventually she looks and acts more like her adult self(Joan)
2 I like the part after Katherine calls the nun a cunt, and then she's mentioning the headmaster while she's alone in the room with Rose while the nuns are near the phone.
3 The Kat and Rose flashback scenes are pretty interesting.
4 The non-chronological order was pretty great.
5 Great detail: Kat raising her ups in the shape of the demon's upright, straight horns. I'm not sure if that was intentional, but it was brilliant. I seen that part multiple times, but I only recently realized those raised arms looked like the demon's horns.
6 The exorcism scene was great. It's cool how the demon literally turns, as if to leave the room like a normal person, then the next shot it isn't there at all anymore. Just gone.
7 It's not explicitly said that Kat and Joan are the same person, but the clues are there. So it doesn't come out of nowhere when you realize the truth.
Joan has the shoulder wound.
She sees a memory of Father Brian.
She has the same hair as Katherine.
Joan's ID is stolen from someone else, showing she is lying about her true identity. Joan is Kat. Kat is Joan.
Kat knows Father Brian. You even see him in her scenes. If someone realizes that Joan knows him too, and has the same hair color as Kat, you can guess that Kat and Joan are the same person very early on.
Kat gets shot. She survives. Like how Joan got shot and survived. More proof they are the same.
8 It's brilliant how this movie about two different time periods fools you into thinking it's just one time period. The truth is that one plot thread takes place several years apart from the other plot thread.
9 The last demon phone call was pretty cool.
10 The last scene with Joan sobbing while alone was pretty cool too. Great acting from Emma Roberts.
11 The furnace not being on and it being cold was a nice touch, showing Joan's demon daddy was truly gone.
12 The demon calls Kat baby girl
13 It's understandable that Kat would go off the rails and kill people for the demon. If you notice, Kat had 0 friends and everyone in the movie was cold to her. Funnily enough, the only person who shows teen Kat warmth and kindness is the demon.
14 Nice touch: When Kat calls the nun a cunt, the word is distorted. Like a demon talking. And in one phone call to Kat, the demons tells her to kill all the cunts. This shows Kat was possessed during that scene with her insulting the nun.
15 The small cast and lack of warmth made me feel alone lol. You feel what Kat feels. It's fitting that this film is set in winter.
16 Joan prettying herself up before going to see demon daddy after murdering two people. Nice.
17 Rose being scared of creepy Kat was funny. And "You had your chance" indeed. Rose only acts nice to Kat when it's already too late. The girl is too far gone then.
The movie could have been better, but it was entertaining enough. 3 out of 5 stars.