The governess is thoroughly ungoverned in “Victorian Psycho,” a grisly ostensible horror comedy from director Zachary Wigon that’s neither frightening nor funny enough to pass muster — and not quite outrageous enough to garner the kind of notoriety it’s aiming for, either. A shot of lurid genre energy that at least provided some tonal contrast at the tail end of a generally tasteful Un Certain Regard program in Cannes, the film stars a miscast Maika Monroe as an unhinged young woman hired by a wealthy family in rural 19th-century England to raise and educate their young son (and daughter, they add grudgingly). It doesn’t take long to discover she’s pretty much the anti-Mary Poppins, or maybe just the antichrist — likelier to recommend a spoonful of cyanide to make the medicine go down.
There’s promise in the idea of a prim, well-spoken but forever subjugated nanny wreaking bloody revenge on England’s cruelly non-negotiable class system. But “Victorian Psycho,” adapted by Spanish author Virginia Feito from her own novel, never commits to the idea — or any idea, really — as it shows its hand early and gets straight down to the business of lavish and fairly undiscriminating bloodshed. From the get-go, there’s scarcely any mystery about who Monroe’s kill-happy carer Winifred Notty is, and with little countering interest in why she is, the film isn’t left with much to do but cheer her on as she terrorizes her masters, her charges and her colleagues alike, at the glum Gothic mansion cursed with her presence.
