If you are someone whose interest perks up when hearing that a movie called Victorian Psycho exists, then this movie is for you. If not, steer clear, because you get exactly what you paid for, with just a little bit extra.

The plot is simple enough at face value. Adapted by Virginia Feito from her 2025 novel, Victorian Psycho, it stars Maika Monroe as Winifred Notty, the governess for the very wealthy Pounds family in 1858 Yorkshire. Right off the bat, Miss Notty, through voice-over, exclaims she feels she is always the sanest person in any room. She is decidedly not. Monroe does a wonderful job in the many, perhaps too many, extreme closeups depicting the disorder behind the mask of normalcy Miss Notty puts on to convince herself and others that she is perfectly sane.

Her two charges, Andrew and Drusilla (Jacobi Jupe and Evie Templeton, respectively), clock something off pretty much right away. As they are rambling through the fields, Andrew asks what happened to the previous children she was governess for, to which Miss Notty states one drowned and two had gone missing. She waits a beat and states, “They were naughty children.” The rest of the household, Mr. and Mrs. Pounds (Jason Isaacs and Ruth Wilson), take somewhat longer to come around. In the meantime, mayhem ensues as Miss Notty tries and fails spectacularly to keep her inner demon, which she calls Fred, hidden inside her, and does her very best to behave like a good governess. She fails spectacularly at that, too.

Victorian Psycho is an extraordinarily handsome film. Ornate and production-designed within an inch of its life, it is lovely to look at, even if gore is not your thing. Cinematographer Nico Aguilar pulls out many tricks, perhaps too many, out of his hat. Aside from the extreme closeups of Monroe, there are shots that barrel down a character’s throat, shots that push through keyholes, and shots that flip upside down. It’s a bit much, as if someone watched Sam Raimi’s camerawork on the “Evil Dead” movies and took the wrong lesson from them. The script is also hit or miss. It runs from archly and ghoulishly clever to gaudy and overly florid from scene to scene.

Luckily, the gusto of the performances keeps the film mostly on track. Monroe is a twitchy hot mess. Isaacs, one of our great comic actors, nails the blustery fool that is Mr. Pounds. Wilson, highly strung and definitively cruel as Mrs. Pounds, plays her as a Victorian matriarch desperate for respectability, herding her dysfunctional family into some approximation of normality. But the prize goes to young Jacobi Jupe (Hamnet). Conceited, spoiled, but still very much a child, he prods Winifred most of all, and since he is the family heir, he is the one that Winifred has to please the most. The way Jupe, during prayers, earnestly delivers the line, “And Lord, please deliver me a subservient wife,” may be the funniest moment of a movie chock-full of them.

There is some social satire as well; as we compare the atrocious behavior of the respectable Pounds family with the murderous impulses of Winifred Notty, the veil between the two becomes vanishingly thin. But mostly, Victorian Psycho wants to give a good, gory time to horror fanatics with a sly sense of humor. And that, it delivers in spades.