#21 - The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015)
Two teenage girls are left behind at their boarding school when their parents don't show up to take them home for the winter break. Rose intentionally tells her parents the wrong date so she can meet her boyfriend, but Kat's parents simply never arrive and cannot be reached by phone. Things start to get weird.
This film presents itself as a bit of a puzzle, and I'd rather not say much about the plot for fear of ruining the suspense. There isn't a "twist", but the story is told in a very unconventional way. It is sometimes confusing, because the perspective frequently shifts between characters and the order in which the events are happening isn't always clear. This requires the audience to piece things together on their own, and even though I think that everything comes together pretty nicely by the end, there are definitely some questions left unanswered.
It takes place in upstate New York in the middle of winter, so it's appropriate that the look of this film is very cold and dreary (I'm sure most of you reading this can relate). The score relies heavily on a sort of atonal droning, which adds a lot to the general feeling of dread that permeates pretty much the whole movie. The pacing is very slow, but deliberate, and I never felt like it dragged at all. The acting from the leads is good all around, but Kiernan Shipka as Kat was the standout performance in my opinion.
I highly recommend this one to fans of slow-burn horror, especially The Witch. Currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
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