Maika Monroe has spent much of the past decade being chased by nightmares. In Victorian Psycho, she finally gets to become one. Zachary Wigon’s gothic horror thriller arrives in U.S. theaters November 13, 2026, putting Monroe at the center of a period story where the apparent victim may be the most dangerous person in the house. The film is a 102-minute production distributed by Bleecker Street, with VVS Films listing its principal cast and theatrical release details.
Based on Virginia Feito’s novel, the movie follows Winifred Notty, an eccentric young governess who accepts a position at the isolated Ensor House in Victorian England. Her assignment is to tutor the Pound children, played by Jacobi Jupe and Evie Templeton, but the household’s carefully maintained order begins to collapse as staff members disappear and suspicion gathers around the new arrival. The film’s central performance turns a familiar gothic setup into something considerably more unhinged.
Feito wrote the screenplay from her own 2025 novel, giving the adaptation an unusually direct connection to its source material. Wigon, whose previous feature Sanctuary explored psychological warfare inside a claustrophobic relationship, directs a cast that also includes Thomasin McKenzie, Jason Isaacs, and Ruth Wilson. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival before moving toward its North American theatrical release. Early trailer coverage describes the movie as a comedy-horror blend built around an unusual governess and a remote manor.
Monroe’s Winifred is not designed as another version of the resourceful “final girl” she has played in films such as It Follows and Longlegs. The creative team instead drew on the cold menace of Jack Nicholson’s performance in The Shining and the calculated alienation of American Psycho. Monroe and Wigon also studied real-life psychopaths while developing Winifred’s mannerisms, from her distant stare to the unnerving sense that she is always withholding part of the truth.
That perspective shift is the movie’s sharpest hook. A gothic manor, imperiled children, disappearing servants, and a bloody climax are familiar genre ingredients, but Victorian Psycho places its possible monster in the governess’s uniform rather than waiting for one to emerge from the shadows. With the film now opening theatrically, the question for horror fans is less whether Winifred can survive Ensor House than how much of the household will survive her.
