Maika Monroe returns to Cannes with gothic thriller Victorian Psycho

Maika Monroe came back to Cannes with a role designed to challenge the “Scream Queen” label that has followed much of her career. Her new film, Victorian Psycho, placed her in Un Certain Regard and cast her as Winifred Notty, an eager governess in 1858 who arrives at Ensor House to teach two children table manners and family history while concealing psychopathically inclined tendencies.

For Monroe, the return carried real symmetry. It Follows, the tiny horror film that helped define her breakthrough, premiered in Cannes’ Critics Week in 2014, turning the festival into an early launchpad for an actor who was then, in her words, “I was a newbie,” when she recalled being there at 21. This time, the part gives her something she has rarely had in earlier films: a character who is not being chased, but is doing the chasing.

That shift matters because it speaks to a larger pattern in Hollywood. Horror has long been a proving ground for young actors, especially women, but prestige recognition often comes only when they move beyond the genre that made them visible in the first place. Monroe’s new turn suggests a different calculation, one in which a horror actor can carry a gothic thriller into Cannes and use the festival stage to widen the frame around her career rather than escape it.

Victorian Psycho, directed by Zachary Wigon, leans into blood, psychological intensity and a darker comic edge. Monroe has said the role offered a freedom she had not found in many previous projects, and that freedom is built into the character itself: Winifred is not the panicked victim familiar from so many genre films, but a figure with a hidden interior life and a taste for control.

Cannes has increasingly made room for that kind of work. The 79th Festival de Cannes runs from May 12 to May 23, 2026, and this year’s lineup also included Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma in Un Certain Regard and Hope in Competition. The festival unveiled its 2026 selection at a press conference in Paris on April 9, underscoring how deliberately it continues to balance awards prestige with genre films that can travel.

Deadline reported that the first teaser trailer for Victorian Psycho debuted on the day of its Cannes premiere, adding another layer of attention to a film built around repositioning. For Monroe, the significance is larger than one title. Cannes has once again become the place where a horror star can test whether the industry will finally reward range without demanding that she first leave her old label behind.