Review: 'Victorian Psycho' is fancy digs in need of some believable viciousness

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Set us as preferred If only there were more to “Victorian Psycho” than just a silly play on words.Based on a 2025 novel by Virginia Feito, the premise is a gender- and era-swapped take on the iconic book and movie “American Psycho.” Both stories imagine a serial-killer tale through the eyes of the unrepentant perpetrator: one a young man in the finance world of 1980s New York City, the other a governess working for an aristocratic family in Victorian England.They are equally bloody fables, but the American film is a fizzy pop satire about status and masculinity, while the girly version, adapted by author Feito, tries to tackle the same class and gender issues but struggles to find its own reason for existing.Director Zachary Wigon certainly attempts to distract the audience from the emptiness of the texts, overdoing it on style, with the cinematography littered with repeated whip-pans and swift up-and-down tilts.

The intended effect is a quirky, bold aesthetic, ostensibly to align the audience with the unusual perspective of our protagonist.But that goes out the window when we get shots from the POV of a disembodied ear and an infant in a carriage.

It becomes bossy, intrusive and irritating in its insistence and inconsistency.Movies From a new “Resident Evil” reboot from the director of “Weapons” to Oscar contenders starring Mikey Madison and Tom Cruise, here are the movies we’ll be at this fall.The film’s wacky camerawork announces itself with a canted opening shot in which our title psycho introduces herself to us.

She is Winifred Notty (Maika Monroe), and she’s the “sanest person” she’s ever met, she declares from the backseat of a carriage delivering her to Ensor House to begin employment for the wealthy Pounds family.OK, girl, whatever you say.Why is it remarkable that she’s crazy and viol...