A good rule of thumb is that if someone tells you they’re the sanest person they’ve ever met, they almost certainly are off their rocker. So when Winifred Notty (Maika Monroe) introduces herself to the audience that way, head cocked eerily over her shoulder, it’s instantly clear who the titular psycho in “Victorian Psycho” is going to be.
Directed by Zachary Wigon, “Victorian Psycho” — written by Virginia Feito and based on her 2025 novel — is a deliciously deranged, hilariously sinister thriller about a woman whose marbles rolled away a long time ago. Miss Notty (as everyone calls her) arrives at Ensor House in 1858, ready to assume a post as the governess of two wealthy children, Drusilla (Evie Templeton) and Andrew (Jacobi Jupe).
Their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Pounds (Jason Isaacs and Ruth Wilson), are nice enough, though Mr. Pounds seems a little lecherous and Mrs. Pounds a bit tightly wound. Still, the magnificent home feels like an oasis to the new governess, who has recently come off a string of appointments in which the children in her care came to tragic ends. Her bedroom in the servants’ quarters is clean, if spare. And if she might spot — or think she spots, anyhow — a single human ear underneath the bed, what’s the harm?
Weird stuff starts happening from the very beginning of “Victorian Psycho,” and the movie often plays coy over whether it’s real or just in Miss Notty’s head. Slowly we get a sense of her life story, which is horrifying. But Feito excels at writing unapologetically repugnant protagonists (her 2021 debut, “Mrs. March,” is astounding in this regard), and Winifred Notty is not someone we’re meant to love. Just when you start to feel bad for her, she does something that is, well, insane.
The movie remains claustrophobically at Ensor House, which the production designer Jeremy Reed turns into a twisty, vulgar, overly ornate home, the kind that status-conscious Victorians might design to reassure themselves about their place in the social register. Through the cinematographer Nico Aguilar’s camera, it is a haunted place, dark and spooky by night, when Miss Notty often runs into Miss Lamb (Thomasin McKenzie), the children’s nurse.
On one level, “Victorian Psycho” doesn’t have a moral, which is part of what makes it so fun: It’s just unhinged for the sheer joy of it. But there is a kind of a social fable sewn into its seams, about the place of women in Victorian society. Miss Notty may think she is possessed by some malevolent force, but we can take a few guesses at how she got that way. Mrs. Pounds is instantly jealous of her, afraid that her own beauty is fading and panicked about losing her place in the world.
And the children are treated with differing levels of care, too. Andrew is coddled by his parents, who want Miss Notty to get him ready for boarding school next year. But they don’t want the same for Drusilla, who, her father explains, “is at an age where she risks her fertility by overeducation.” No matter that Drusilla is older, and clearly more clever, than her brother. This is the way of things.
Miss Notty clocks this disparity immediately. She may be a governess, tasked with teaching children morals and values, but on the inside she knows how ludicrous this all is. Out loud, she instructs the children that “the rules of society must ever be maintained,” but to us, she remarks that “this is how societies fall: entire fortunes inherited by preposterously stupid firstborn sons.”
She’s always making these sorts of wry asides in voice-over to us, which has the effect of making us feel as if we’re in her head. Monroe, a psychological horror movie regular (she starred in “It Follows” and “Longlegs,” among others), has just the right sort of face for this role, high cheekboned and angular; she can look innocent and prim, but can also stretch her features uncannily. Like everyone in Ensor House, we are left wondering what to believe.
“Victorian Psycho” is self-evidently hurtling toward an explosively bloody ending. But on the way there, it pokes fun at the patriarchal norms — the bad behavior we may excuse in men, but never women — that did not fade away when the 19th century ended. Winifred Notty may not be the sanest person she’s ever said she’s met. But in a world that so often feels mad, you can hardly blame her for thinking so.
Victorian Psycho Rated R for plenty of blood and bad behavior, plus some disturbing images and a subtle mention of child sexual abuse. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.
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