The 21st century has yielded no shortage of stylish horror marbled with devious veins of pitch-dark humor — Peter Strickland’s In Fabric, Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, Halina Reijn’s Bodies Bodies Bodies, Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell, pretty much every Jordan Peele feature. Plenty of skilled directors can manipulate tension and fear while still poking us toward nervous laughter. But others end up with films in which the dueling forces cancel each other out, working as neither horror nor comedy. Zachary Wigon’s Victorian Psycho is one such awkward fusion, ultimately just coming off as silly.
Adapted from her novel by Spanish author Virginia Feito, the film mutes any scare factor by winking at the audience with archly exaggerated performances from an ensemble whose most consistent note from the director appears to have been “Go bigger!” At times, the movie veers almost into spoof territory, but it never commits to the bit enough to be anything more than a mismatched genre hybrid, despite its atmospheric visuals and strong design elements.
Victorian Psycho
The Bottom Line
We are not amused.
