This one enjoys playing with the audience. You are never really sure of what's real or if any of this is some sort of hallucination or dream. You get the sense that you are being led down a menacing path with no hope of a happy ending. And of course you are. The filmmaker, Oz Perkins, is deliberately foreshadowing, even flaunting a dreary conclusion. It's woven into the storytelling and overall tone. Slowly pushing and pulling at your sensibilities. Almost waving you in.
We've been getting a lot of slow burn in horror recently. Slow burns can be a very useful cinematic device. They force you to live in the moment. You don't have the luxury of distraction. There is no fun, modern soundtrack or comedic prat falls with witty one liners to guide you through the film. You have to soak in the entire setting. Some directors conclude a slow burn with an obvious jump scare, others choose to deceptively transition to another slow burn. I think Blackcoat does the latter. I don't recall any cheap thrills or forced jumps. The pacing felt like clockwork, as if we are counting down to something. But this film is using two different clocks.
After my initial viewing I wasn't immediately overwhelmed. I just thought to myself 'Ok. That's an ending you could do.' And I went about my day. But then some time passed and I found myself thinking about Emma Roberts at the end of the movie... screaming and crying in the dead of winter. Deafening silence.
I got goosebumps just thinking about it. The weight of her loss finally hit me. An hour after the movie had ended. All alone. Full of despair. Her character had dealt with grief as a child when she lost her parents, and she dealt with it alone. Eventually she coped with her loss and isolation by allowing an evil entity to guide her. To consumer her. She gave in to this power to fill the void, to fill the emptiness. And when it left her, after the exorcism in the hospital, she pleaded with it not to go. But it left anyway. And she was alone again.
The desire to get that feeling back is what drove her to murder her way out of the mental institution. But she didn't really have a plan other than escape. Enter Rose's parents. This is fate, she thinks. Fate had brought Rose's parents to her. Nine years after murdering their only daughter. It was perfect. It was her second chance. It was hope. The thought of it made her so giddy she laughed. And she knew what she had to do. Kill these people, sacrifice them for her deity and he would welcome her back. And she wouldn't be alone anymore.
He would climb back inside and fill the soulless hole, emptied so long ago. There was no conflict about this decision, she knew what she had to do, and she did it. It was cut and dry. She kills them as easily as a child smashes a bug. Very little emotion. Similar to how she murdered Rose and the two Sisters nine years before. She saw her moment and she took it.
Confident she would soon be reunited with her spiritual advisor, she takes the severed heads to the boiler room; no doubt it would work. But things didn't go as planned. It didn't work. The sacrifice did not take. He didn't come back. She is still alone.
She butchered those grieving parents and she is still all alone. Hope turned back to despair. And Emma Roberts absolutely nailed it.
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