“I’m the sanest person I’ve ever met,” insists Winifred Notty, the title character of Victorian Psycho, as the movie begins. That’s the start of a conversation with the audience that allows us to peek inside Winifred’s splintering mind through the power of voice-over—which is just one way Zachary Wigon’s film inspires us to root for a character who almost instantly starts committing an array of gruesome crimes.

Victorian Psycho—screenwriter Virginia Feito adapts her own 2025 novel—is both stomach-turning and fantastically entertaining. It’s macabre but also hilarious, subverting the idea of a stuffy Victorian drama with body parts, splatter, some incisive observations about class, and a sly feminist message.

Anchoring this stylized nightmare is Maika Monroe (The Guest, It Follows, Longlegs), whose performance as Winifred further cements her place in the horror pantheon. From our very first glimpse of Winifred’s face arranged in a greatly unnerving expression beneath her proper bonnet, starkly contrasting her proclamation of sanity, we know something isn’t right with this eccentric governess.

“This won’t be like the other times,” she vows as she marches up to Ensor House, the country mansion where she’s been hired by the unsuspecting Pounds family. We’re left to wonder briefly about those other times, but it’s not a mystery that needs explanation once we get to know Winifred a little better. Bad things happened. Things with a body count.

But as her affirmation suggests, Winifred is determined to make a go of it at Ensor House.

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