Henry James published The Turn of the Screw in 1898 and handed literature its most enduring uncertainty, since readers have spent a century arguing over whether his governess sees ghosts or manufactures them. Virginia Feito has settled the question with considerable style. Her novel Victorian Psycho arrives at the same country house from the opposite direction, giving us a governess who knows exactly what she is doing, and the film adaptation reaches American theaters on November 13 with Maika Monroe wearing the bonnet.
A Governess With Plans, and a Cast to Match
The story opens in 1858 at Ensor House, a remote Yorkshire estate where Winifred Notty has been engaged to educate the children of Mr and Mrs Pounds. Staff begin disappearing shortly after her arrival, which the household finds curious. Jason Isaacs and Ruth Wilson play the employers with the exact degree of complacency the situation requires, Thomasin McKenzie appears as the nurse who works out what is happening rather sooner than anyone else, and Jacobi Jupe, fresh from Hamnet, plays the son. Feito, a Spanish author whose Mrs. March announced her talent for women coming apart in expensive interiors, adapted her own novel for the screen, with Zachary Wigon directing and Ariel Marx composing. The film premiered at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section this May, where critics divided pleasurably between those who found it deliciously obscene and those who wished it had chosen between horror and comedy. Monroe, who built her reputation on running away from things in It Follows and Longlegs, has switched sides entirely, and the pleasure of watching her hold a rictus grin in place through a formal dinner is considerable.
Why Everyone Is Dressing Like a Victorian Right Now
Virginia Feito, Victorian Psycho, $ 14.05
The wardrobe has arrived ahead of the film. High necklines, ruffled collars and puff sleeves took over the BAFTAs red carpet in February, and the runways had already made the case, with Collina Strada staging a Fall 2026 collection titled The World Is A Vampire where organza collars rose protectively toward the chin. Dilara Findikoglu has been building her corseted gothic vocabulary for years, and Yuhan Wang, Bora Aksu and Chloé joined her with lace and broderie anglaise, while Gabriela Hearst worked Edwardian lace into hand-crocheted cashmere and Prada kept the witchy boot firmly in play. The timing makes sense. Screens have been full of the nineteenth century, between Nosferatu, Frankenstein and Emerald Fennell‘s Wuthering Heights, and clothes tend to follow whatever the culture has been staring at. The appeal runs deeper than costume, since a covered neckline and a structured bodice offer a kind of armor, and armor has rarely felt more appropriate. Winifred Notty would approve, though her reasons differ from yours.
