Over the last week, Cannes served up a fair share of European arthouse and even a splash of insane live-action CGI monster action (that’ll be “Hope”). On Thursday, it was the turn of bloody horror to have its moment at the festival.
“Victorian Psycho,” Zachary Wigon’s gothic thriller starring Maika Monroe as a possessed woman whose arrival at a 19th-century estate sparks a crescendo of chaos — including bloody axe attacks, murdered infants and much, much more gore — woke up a sleepy Cannes on Thursday afternoon. The darkly comic Gothic thriller bowed in Un Certain Regard and earned a 5-minute standing ovation, with much of the cheers aimed at Monroe (aptly dressed in a blood red dress).
Thomasin McKenzie, Ruth Wilson and Jason Isaacs also star in the film, which follows an eccentric young governess who arrives at a remote gothic manor only to find its staff inexplicably begin to disappear. As per the film’s description: “‘Victorian Psycho’ invites us into the mind of a psychopath – trapped in a world she cannot control, living on the border between insurrection and madness.”
Liz Siegal, Ruth Wilson, Zachary Wigon, Maika Monroe, Evie Templeton and Virigina Feito pose during the “Victorian Psycho” screening at the 79th Cannes Film Festival.
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Speaking to Variety before the premiere, Wigon suggested a term he used to describe the numerous tones in the film, which moves through pitch-black humor, empathy, fury and larger-than-life moments.
“The word I kept using was ‘demented,’” he says. “It’s a big tent. Demented encompasses scary, but also funny and outrageous.”
The film is based on Virginia Feito’s best-selling novel of the same name. Bleecker Street has acquired distribution rights in the U.S. and set a release date of September 25, with True Brit on board in the U.K. and Ireland. Anton is fully financing the film and representing international rights.
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