Movies
‘The Blackcoat’s Daughter’ Was Raised By the Dark!
One of the best films I saw in 2015 was Osgood Perkins‘ masterful February (read my review), starring Emma Roberts (“American Horror Story”, Scream Queens”) and Kiernan Shipka (“Mad Men,” Carriers), with Lucy Boynton (Miss Porter), James Remar (“Dexter”), and Lauren Holly (Dumb and Dumber).
A24, who released The Witch, acquired this Satanic masterpiece out of the Toronto International Film Festival. Retitled to The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Bloody Disgusting told you recently that you’ll finally be able to see this chilling tale on August 25th, specifically on DirecTV, with a theatrical run now slated for September 30th. We now have the film’s official theatrical one-sheet to go along with the fresh synopsis:
“A deeply atmospheric and terrifying new horror film, The Blackcoat’s Daughter centers on Kat (Kiernan Shipka) and Rose (Lucy Boynton), two girls who are left alone at their prep school Bramford over winter break when their parents mysteriously fail to pick them up. While the girls experience increasingly strange and creepy occurrences at the isolated school, we cross cut to another story—that of Joan (Emma Roberts), a troubled young woman on the road, who, for unknown reasons, is determined to get to Bramford as fast as she can. As Joan gets closer to the school, Kat becomes plagued by progressively intense and horrifying visions, with Rose doing her best to help her new friend as she slips further and further into the grasp of an unseen evil force. The movie suspensefully builds to the moment when the two stories will finally intersect, setting the stage for a shocking and unforgettable climax.”
Principal photography took place in Ottawa on the film written and directed by Osgood Perkins, son of legendary Psycho actor Anthony Perkins.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter is produced by Unbroken Pictures’ Adrienne Biddle and Bryan Bertino (The Strangers), Rob Paris’ Paris Film, Inc. (Everly), Zed Filmworks’ Rob Menzies and Alphonse Ghossein of Go Insane Films. Carissa Buffel and Kevin Matusow are executive producing under their Traveling Picture Show (The Quiet Ones) banner along with 120dB Films’ Peter Graham and Steve Hayes, and Arianne Fraser.
The Evil Dead universe expands this weekend with the arrival of Evil Dead Burn in theaters, unleashing a demonic siege upon a grieving family. Director Sébastien Vaniček doles out a gauntlet of pain from beginning to end, and that includes the credits.
While Evil Dead Rise skipped out on credit scenes, Evil Dead Burn follows 2013’s Evil Dead with the inclusion of a mid-credit scene and a post-credit scene, extending the Deadite mayhem to the very end.
Vaniček uses the mid-credit scene for levity, injecting one last punchline of gallows humor regarding the Price family. It also raises questions on where that carnage leads. But it’s the post-credit scene that holds larger franchise implications, sure to get fans talking.
It also doesn’t make much sense.
Warning: Major spoilers ahead!
Evil Dead Burn directly ties to Evil Dead Rise, with a possessed Jessica (portrayed in the new movie by Greta Van Den Brink) brutally dispatches a pair of fishermen before leaving the lake in search of those in possession of the Kandarian dagger: the Price family. Deadite Jessica kicks off a new wave of terror when she targets eldest son Will (George Pullar), using him as a Trojan horse into his family.
The Evil Dead Rise connections come full circle in Burn’s post-credit scene, bringing back a fan-favorite Deadite.
In this scene, the daughter of the cremator hired to handle Will’s remains gets curious about a shelf of unclaimed ashes. Among them are the ashes of Ellie Bixler. The girl, left alone while her mom is tending to a client, hears a voice she mistakes for her mother. It’s not.
The voice guides her to a mirror, where she sees not her reflection but that of Deadite Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland). Ellie wastes no time dispatching the child, claiming with a grin, “Mommy’s back.“
Sutherland’s Deadite performance remains a standout in this franchise, but Ellie’s appearance here doesn’t make much sense beyond fan service. Evil Dead Rise final girl Beth (Lily Sullivan) reduces Ellie, who’d assimilated into the Marauder, to a bloody pulp via tree shredder in the film’s climax. There’s not a lot of flesh or sinew left to cremate, to start. To really get into semantics, the Marauder was an amalgam of multiple Deadites in one, so separating her remains from, say, Danny’s (Morgan Davies) or the neighbors seems like an impossible task.
The Marauder in Evil Dead Rise
It’s also jarring in that Deadites tend to prefer to make their torment personal. Ellie has zero connection to this random child. To further nitpick, there are likely much closer crematoriums to Ellie’s home, even if the lake and Price household are in the general region.
Most of all, Vaniček plays so fast and loose with the Deadite possession rules that this scene breaks from the established norms in a confusing way. There’s no dagger here or incantation to summon a demon, so it’s not clear how just being in the presence of her ashes summons her here.
Does any of this really matter? Not at all. The haplessness of this scene’s inclusion doesn’t seem to suggest anything other than a fun momentary reprise of a fan favorite character. It does, however, seem to leave the door wide open for Ellie’s full return.
It’ll be a while before we find out if that is indeed the intention behind this scene; the next is Evil Dead Wrath from director Francis Galluppi (The Last Stop in Yuma County) set for theatrical release on April 7, 2028. It’ll predate all Evil Dead films with its 1972 setting.
Evil Dead Rise
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