Review #78: The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015)

This review was originally written in October 2019.

October Horror Movie Review #26: The Blackcoat's Daughter

Okay, full disclosure time: Due to the sheer amount of time it takes to watch 31 movies, I've watched a handful of movies this month under less-than-ideal conditions. I watched today's movie while at work, on my phone, with an external speaker; which meant that I was contending both with ambient noise (I work in a very noisy environment) but also with lots of glare on the screen. Also, I may not have been looking directly at the screen 100% of the time.

It's important to note, however, that I've watched several movies this way (and even outside of October's horror movies I watch things this way fairly often) and most of the time, it's not a problem in the slightest. I might miss a detail here or there, or I might need to rewind something or pause it until I can focus more heavily on what I'm watching, but in nearly every case I can pick up enough of what I'm watching to understand it, appreciate it, and give a fair review of it.

This is all preamble before today's review both to be honest about my viewing experience, as well as hopefully discourage anyone from thinking, "Oh, Gabe just didn't like it because he didn't watch it under the right conditions/he didn't pay enough attention/whatever."

Today's movie was The Blackcoat's Daughter. I'll give a synopsis a little later on, but first let me get my thoughts out there: This movie has three very big problems.

1. This movie is waaaaaay too slow.

2. This movie is waaaaaay too quiet.

3. This movie is waaaaaay too dark.

While keeping in mind what I said earlier about my viewing experience (both the conditions as well as my assurance that those conditions have never been a problem thus far), listen to me when I say I could not understand a dang thing that happened in this movie until the last twenty minutes. With my speaker cranked up to the maximum AND my speaker held directly to my ear, I could only make out about every third word said by anyone in this movie, because EVERYONE SPOKE IN A WHISPER. For most of the scenes I couldn't tell what was happening or even who was in a scene because EVERY SCENE IS DARK. And throughout the entire film I felt like NOTHING WAS HAPPENING.

I get that this movie was probably meant to be a slow burn, but it is a slooooooooow buuuuuuuuuurn (and I'm not even convinced it was a burn at all). Not only does very little actually happen in it, but every scene was drawn out significantly longer than it needed to be by these looooooong sweeeeeeeping shots and paaaaaaauses between eeeeeeeeeeverything. If you cut out every second of silence and every action taken by a character that didn't directly affect the plot, I swear you'd be left with about fifteen minutes of footage. I couldn't even tell you what this movie was about until like sixty minutes in, and once I knew what it was about, I struggled to come up with a synopsis that didn't give away every single plot point (as there were incredibly few plot points). And it was incredibly frustrating to strain my ears and strain my eyes to watch and listen as best as I could to try and make sense of this plot, only to get to the end (and eventually read a plot synopsis) and realize that the problem wasn't because I couldn't see/hear, it was because NOTHING WAS HAPPENING.

I will give you two plot synopses. One will be incredibly vague and the other will give away basically the entire plot. There is no middle ground.

The vague one:

The Blackcoat's Daughter follows three girls stranded in or around a boarding school over the holidays. One or more of them may or may not be evil.

And now, the spoiler-filled one:

The Blackcoat's Daughter is a nonlinear story about two girls stranded at a boarding school, until one of them gets possessed by a demon (?) and starts killing people. Nine years later, she escapes a mental institute and returns to the school, killing people along the way.

I want to re-iterate how frustrating it was to watch this movie. Slow burns aren't a problem. Dark scenes and quiet scenes aren't a problem. The problem comes when the ENTIRE MOVIE is ALL THREE, ALL THE TIME. When I started the movie and could barely hear anything I said to myself (as I've said with many movies before), "It's okay, next scene I'll pick up on context clues and it'll make sense." Except then the next scene was just as quiet. When the first few scenes were dark I'd say, "It's okay, next scene I'll pick up on context clues and it'll make sense." Except all of the scenes were just as dark. There's a scene where someone gets murdered and I couldn't tell who had just gotten murdered because I couldn't see who anyone was; and because the phone call in the previous scene (the one that prompted the murders) was so incredibly quiet I had no clue WHY this mystery person was murdered in the first place! And all of these problems were exacerbated by the fact that all of my struggling to follow the plot WAS FOR NOTHING because of how slow the plot goes and how most of the plot and character beats GO NOWHERE.

Lots of movies have dark scenes. Lots of movies have quiet scenes. But when you have a looooooooong, slooooooooow, quiet, dark scene, followed by a loooooooong, sloooooooow, quiet, dark scene, and then a looooooooong, sloooooooow, quiet, dark scene, you start REALLY HOPING that maybe, just maybe, there will be a looooooooong slooooow quiet bright scene. Or a looooooooong slooooooow dark scene where people speak at a normal volume.

"But Gabe," I hear you speaking into your keyboard, "Maybe something is wrong with your speaker. Or perhaps the file you were watching had bad audio."

No, my speaker works fine. The file was fine (I watched it on Netflix). I know this because whenever a phone rang, or whenever the soundtrack kicked in, IT WAS WAAAAAAY LOUDER THAN ANYTHING ELSE. The music was so loud that my speaker was making my whole body vibrate and I was getting weird looks from people fifteen feet away. But then, someone would speak, and it would be like I had shoved cottonballs in my ears.

Now, is it fair for me to write a review for a movie and do nothing but complain about how quiet and dark it was? Maybe, maybe not. Would I have had a better experience if I had watched it under optimal conditions? Maybe, maybe not. (Though I feel that if your movie is only good when watched under optimal conditions, the argument could be made that it isn't good in the first place.) But the darkness and volume and pacing were deliberate choices from the director, and they directly resulted in me having a terrible experience watching this film.

Even after reading a synopsis I still think it's bad. I read some other people's reviews (not too many, though- I didn't want to just parrot other people's thoughts) and it sounds like a lot of people had similar issues to me, so I don't feel like I'm going crazy. But I also know that a lot of people absolutely love this movie. Whatever the case, I do not recommend The Blackcoat's Daughter.

Overall Rating: 0/10 (keep reading though)

Explanation of My Rating: Back when I reviewed The Dark Tapes I made a comment to someone that I gave it a 1 out of 10 because my personal rating system doesn't allow for anything less than that. The reason I'm giving The Blackcoat's Daughter a zero is not because I think it was worse than The Dark Tapes (I haven't decided if it is or not), but rather because I don't feel I can fairly give it a rating at all. I did not like it, but I can't say what my rating would be if there weren't so many outside factors influencing my experience. And I have no intention of watching it again. So.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯