Saint Maud (2019)
Tell me if this sounds like a story you've been told countless times throughout the history of horror: a young, antisocial, emotionally stunted individual (typically a woman) becomes so consumed by their devotion to God and desperation to serve Him on their self-destructive path to personal transformation that their sanity begins to slip and ultimately devolves into pure, delusion-driven madness. However, what if the woman in this particular case were not always like that? That they were once a happy, vibrant, sociable human being like anybody else, hanging out at bars with friends, hooking up with random men who would give them the slightest look of interest. And all it took to transform them into a volatile, complete stranger to their own self was a single instance of trauma in the workplace. A trauma so unforgettable, so unforgivable, so drenched in blood, that they could never dream of being the normal person they once were. Such is the subtly subversive premise unearthed in Rose Glass' feature directorial debut Saint Maud, a fast-paced, sensual, deeply unsettling pressure cooker that delves into the mind of a seriously disturbed young woman with a surprising shortage of gore but an admirably high level of sensitivity, psychological disquiet, and visual style, all brought to life by a mesmerizing lead performance in the titular role.
Plunging straight into the abyss, Glass opens her psychological horror film with an immediately alarming image of a woman's hair, long, colorless, and disheveled, hanging over a hospital bed in a dimly lit room. The camera starts at the top of the woman's head before pedestaling downward to reveal droplets of blood dripping down from her hair and forming a puddle on the floor. In the corner sits a shell-shocked young nurse named Katie (Morfydd Clark). Glass captures her reaction in close-up, a technique she will return to constantly throughout the course of this journey. Katie is horrified, racked with guilt. Her eyes widen and fresh blood dots her face. The deceased woman lies slumped over the table, her body resting on top but her head hanging lifelessly beyond. As Katie takes a breath and rests her head against the wall behind her, she looks up at the ceiling and sees a large cockroach crawling across. Her traumatized gaze fixes on this intimidatingly oversized bug, as if it means something, has some sort of message to offer her. The screen slowly turns black, making way for the large blocks of the title to appear onscreen, accompanied by a frightening groan in the musical score.
Over a year later, Katie has rechristened herself Maud after converting to Roman Catholicism. No longer employed at Saint Afra's Hospital, she has decided to downgrade to a palliative nurse working for a private agency because, in her own words, "It takes nothing special to mop up after the decrepit and the dying." She lives in a cramped, woefully untidy single-room apartment whose walls are adorned with religious iconography. A bed sits an uncomfortably narrow distance from the kitchen. An open window lets in the indecipherable arguing of a nearby couple, so Maud promptly shuts it. She desires no contact with the outside world apart from her work. Her suitcase is packed for her upcoming assignment in which she will look after Amanda Kohl (Jennifer Ehle), a 49-year-old former dancer and choreographer who suffers from stage four lymphoma of the spinal cord.
One of the most peculiar aspects of Maud is that she not only prays to God for guidance before a meal, but genuinely believes she's in mutual contact with the Almighty, having casual conversations and wholeheartedly believing she's receiving responses. Sometimes, she claims, she can even hear His voice. Not only that, but He even makes physical contact when she does something to please Him. "Most of the time," she tells Amanda, "it's just like He's physically... in me or around me. It's how He guides me. Like, when He's pleased, it's like a... a shiver or... sometimes it's like a pulsing. And it's all warm and good. And He's just there."
As bizarrely unsettling as it is to hear these words exit her mouth with such quiet certainty, it's also a profoundly upsetting and enlightening insight into the depth of Maud's loneliness. She uses God not just to help her cope with the guilt of having failed to save the life of a patient in her care, but as a source of eternal company and comfort. That last line in the quote above says it all. She's a lonely, traumatized lost soul desperately seeking redemption, and believes she's finally found it in her latest charge.
Amanda, on the other hand, is the polar opposite of Maud. Whereas Maud's life is practically just beginning, Amanda's is nearing the very end, and by God, she's going to live every second as though it's her last... because at any second, it very well could be. Despite (or rather because of) dying of cancer, Amanda still smokes like a chimney and downs her B12 vitamins with a glass of alcohol. She may be confined to a wheelchair, but she still wants to maintain her independence by wheeling herself when she can, even if Maud offers to do it for her. Glass' screenplay cleverly juxtaposes the interior lives and personalities of her fascinating protagonists: Maud's timidity, prudishness, and piousness with Amanda's uninhibited, go-for-broke swashbuckling and live-for-today hedonism; Amanda's gothic, spacious mansion which sits atop a gargantuan hill with Maud's constricted, dirty apartment with clothes strewn all over the floor and cockroaches (perhaps the same one from the hospital?) infesting the walls.
While on the surface Maud and Amanda are entirely different from one another, one thing unites them: loneliness. As we eventually find out from a former colleague named Joy (Lily Knight), Maud used to live a very sociable life, "out and about" on the town. Following her life-changing experience that one night on the job, she now lives a life of solitude, living alone, cut off from the rest of the world, incapable of interacting with other people the way she used to. In what is surely the film's most heartbreaking sequence, Maud, after losing her job due to an impulsive act of violence, makes a pitiful attempt to revert to her hedonistic lifestyle, swapping out her professional nursing attire for something much sexier and more revealing, losing the ponytail and showcasing her natural beauty. She goes to a bar, orders a drink, and sits down by herself at a table. Desperate for a connection, any kind of human contact, she flirts with a handsome man sitting with his friend. She stares at him lustfully until his eyes meet hers. Mark Towns' taut, to-the-point editing cuts straight to Maud giving this man a hand job in the bathroom, where he prematurely ejaculates. Silently disgusted, Maud wipes her hand and returns to her table. Sitting beside her are a group of friends laughing over a conversation. Maud turns her attention to them and tries to join in, mindlessly laughing along with them, hoping they will notice her and invite her to sit with them. They don't. One man looks at her with a slight glare: "Who the hell are you? Why are you laughing at our private conversation?" Realizing her efforts are futile, Maud's forced smile quickly fades, and she turns back to her table of one. She moves to the bar and begins drowning her sorrow in shots. In a bathroom stall, she calls Joy and invites her to have a drink with her, claiming she arrived with some friends who are getting ready to leave. We can't hear Joy's responses on the other end, but based on Maud's facial reactions, we know exactly what the answer is. Morfydd Clark plays this scene masterfully, with such emotionally naked authenticity, you can physically feel her drowning in an achingly relatable yearning for connection.
This scene actually reminds me of an experience I once had in seventh grade. I was sitting at a table with a group of boys, all of whom seemed to be friends. I was the odd one out, the guy who was "just there", a role I played frequently in school. One day, two of the guys, one of whom had actually been my friend the grade prior but who now barely spoke to me or acknowledged my presence, were having a discussion about shirts. From what I remember, the boy I was previously friends with was being called out for wearing a shirt similar to one he had recently worn. I may have completely misheard, but it sounded like he said he owned a group of identical shirts, and this was just part of the pack. So silly twelve- or thirteen-year-old me thought it would be a good idea to jump in and insert myself in the conversation. Just going for it, I said something to the effect of, "So they make duplicates?" With a tone of undisguised revulsion, the former friend asked "What?" Realizing I had just made a hugely misguided error of judgment, my heart probably pounding in my throat, I calmly repeated and elaborated on my question, asking if the shirts he had ordered were duplicates of one another. Utterly baffled and creeped out by my random question, the boy awkwardly nodded and condescendingly answered, "Uh-huh." From that moment forward, I learned something about the world: don't insert yourself in other people's conversations. If you're not friends with them, and you just happen to be in close proximity where you can hear them, don't jump in and embarrass yourself. As humiliating and unforgettable as this relatively small moment in my teenage life was, it taught me this very valuable life lesson that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I'd imagine Maud learned the exact same painful lesson (albeit in a markedly less humiliating manner) following her ill-judged excursion to this bar.
Amanda may live in a much bigger, more appealing setting, but like Maud, she's all alone in it. Sure, she has a multitude of friends who come to her birthday party and light the candles on her cake and sing Happy Birthday. She even has a late-night lover named Carol (Lily Frazer) whom she met online and pays for sexual encounters. (Although why Carol receives money for her companionship is never adequately explained.) However, in a rare moment of character-revealing vulnerability, Amanda, lying in bed late at night just before Maud goes home, asks Maud to stay with her, saying she doesn't want to be alone. She confesses her fear over the oblivion of death and wonders aloud what her final moments will be like, who will be there, and what will happen after. "Nothing?" she ponders, with tears welling in her eyes and a desperate smile masking the pain on her face. Jennifer Ehle is a fireball, playing Amanda as a vivacious woman who's lived a most eventful, prosperous life, and is now powerless to stop it from slipping between her fingers like sand. This is the end of the journey for her, and she knows it. Ehle brings a mixture of empathetic bitterness, acidic wit, world-weary cynicism, ambiguous gregariousness, and pathos to her role, masking Amanda's vulnerability and terror of the unknown with an alluring bravado. Even with a brunette wig to cover her bald head, her sexy smile, and her confident shoulder shake as she watches Carol dance in front of her, Amanda's smile still fades, and she self-consciously covers her chest in her nightdress, aware that she's no longer the indestructible, ageless wonder she once was.
As the relationship between Maud and Amanda develops, the former becomes convinced that God has tasked her with saving the latter's embittered soul. "Father, thank you," Maud says. "Now, don't get me wrong, palliative care is noble work. But I always knew you had something more planned for me." Maud is clearly aiming to redeem herself in the eyes of the Lord for her perceived past sin and to earn her entry into the Pearly Gates. But does she feel Amanda's soul needs saving because she's nearing her last breath and has rejected religion? Therefore, when her time comes, she won't be accepted? Or is it because she's a heathen who engages in lesbian relationships, drinking, and smoking? Perhaps Maud sees Amanda as a reflection of the woman she used to be not that long ago. After all, the last time she engaged in that lifestyle, a patient died a horrible, bloody death on her watch. Like the villain of a slasher franchise -- but make no mistake, Maud is not a villain, at least not in any intentional, traditional sense -- Maud may view a life of promiscuity and bodily recklessness as inherently sinful. Similar to Clarice Starling's personal interest in rescuing Catherine Martin from Buffalo Bill to rid herself of the guilt of having failed to save the one lamb from being slaughtered, Maud sees Amanda as her chance at redemption for failing to save her patient's life. In addition to that, it makes sense that she would transition to palliative care, since it means she never again has to worry about saving someone's life. They're already dying, and all she has to do is keep them comfortable in the meantime, to ensure their remaining days are filled with positivity and friendship.
So Maud decides to take the initiative and go beyond her new patient's back to secure both of their fates when their time is up. She gathers all of Amanda's wine bottles and pours them down the sink, and the morning after she watches Amanda and Carol having sex, she confronts Carol privately and implores her to stop seeing Amanda. Although this raises another question about Maud's motivations: is she trying to push Carol out of the picture because she fears her involvement in Amanda's life will turn God away from her? A classic case of Bible-based homophobia. Or is Maud developing romantic feelings herself for Amanda, and is jealously pushing Carol out of the way so she can have Amanda all to herself? Clark portrays Maud with the perfect touch of ambiguity, never allowing the audience any concrete answers as to her legitimate internal motivations. I certainly don't believe Maud is a bigot who simply assumes homosexuals are destined to go to hell. She's far too sweet, timid, and sympathetic to earn such a stereotypical description. I believe Maud is simply a lonely person. As Amanda even tactlessly states late in the film, "You must be the loneliest girl I've ever seen." She's been on her own, both literally and emotionally, for so long at this point that her relationship with Amanda is the closest she's come to having a friend. And she doesn't want to share that with anybody else, especially another young, attractive, promiscuous woman. Glass' treatment of her characters' growing bond is extremely sensual. While performing exercises, Maud's and Amanda's fingers intertwine. As Amanda sits upright in bed, approaching her final moments, Maud rests her hand comfortingly on her patient's cheek, and Amanda rests hers on Maud's hand. During the aforementioned workout to prevent Amanda's limbs from going stiff, Maud manipulates her leg, moving it around slowly and cautiously. It's obviously professional care for a dying woman, but the erotic effect is difficult to ignore.
Talk about a fresh-faced young actor exploding onto the scene. Morfydd Clark is a relative newcomer in Hollywood. The only other movie I had personally seen her in was the 2019 creature feature Crawl, in which she played the sister of Kaya Scodelario's protagonist and was only shown onscreen briefly -- in the tiny box of a cellphone. It was a fairly worthless role that could've been "portrayed" by any 20-30-year-old woman off the street, a single day of acting class not required. Clearly a filmmaker who values and showcases the unseen talents of those on the margins of cinema, Glass gifted her starring role to Clark, and she proves this wasn't a mistake, delivering an eye-opening performance that's already leading to further starring roles (she recently starred opposite Charles Manson actor Matt Smith in Daniel Kokotajlo's folk horror film, Starve Acre). Maud appears to be a role Clark was born to play, a role I can't imagine any other actress off the top of my head playing. Clark embodies this broken woman so thoroughly inside and out that the entire performance feels like one prolonged silent scream of loneliness, pain, and longing. Clark is downright excellent at conveying Maud's excruciating loneliness, quiet persistence, and single-minded determination with equal conviction. It's reminiscent in both character and performance of Kika Magalhaes in The Eyes of My Mother and Sissy Spacek in Carrie, like-minded psychological horrors that explored the devastating (and homicidal) impact of extreme isolation on the human mind. From the first shot in the corner of a hospital room to the final one set on a beach, Clark wears an almost inhuman intensity behind her beautiful eyes that offer a window into the soul of this tortured character. You can feel it in your bones early on that something malevolent is festering within Maud's being, but Clark guarantees our sympathy and empathy. I was never afraid of Maud, even though I was fully aware how sick she is. Clark maneuvers between moments of elation and relief, like when time goes by without Carol calling, and humiliation and repressed anger, such as when Amanda drunkenly blabs to her friends in front of Maud that she tried to drive Carol away behind her back.
Clark does some tremendous physical acting as well, contorting her limbs at one point when she believes God has taken possession of her body, and occasionally opening her mouth in ecstasy just a tad too wide for comfort. Glass takes an innovatively restrained approach to the trope of bodily possession, encouraging her audience to question whether Maud is actually under the control of a supernatural force like God or the Devil, or is merely a deranged human being whose possession is strictly psychological. She avoids flashy visual effects, save a pair of woefully unconvincing CGI angel wings in the second to last scene, to preserve the ambiguity of her main character and the source of her horror... that is, until the very last, blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot. No heads spin around at 360 degrees here. No pea-soup vomit comes spewing out on anyone's face. In Glass' grounded interpretation of a (potential) possession, Maud returns to her apartment after a night of excess pity drinking. She turns on the sink to take a sip of water and forgets to shut it off. Her hands begin to tremble and she vomits. A sign from God, or simple everyday alcohol poisoning? Fireworks are set off at the most conveniently inconvenient time. Maud collapses on the floor and feels an otherworldly presence has taken hold of her body. Her legs and hands twist violently. Water pours from the overfilled sink. She lets out a pained, stifled scream, and suddenly her body levitates. Is this an actual occurrence of possession, or is Maud imagining what she wants to imagine? It's a brilliantly deranged sequence of physical acting, lighting, sound design, and psychological ambiguity.
From a narrative standpoint, Saint Maud is somewhat slight, offering not a whole lot more than a newly religious convert taking care of a dying heathen whose soul she intuitively believes is in dire need of saving. Cinematographically, however, this is a tremendously accomplished first picture for Rose Glass. Working in cahoots with gifted cameraman Ben Fordesman, Glass paints this slow-burn character study in a quiet, isolated, chilly seaside town with perpetual overcast skies and a distinct shortage of citizens. On her way to work, Maud walks past a seemingly inactive Ferris wheel and a brightly lit casino called Coney Island. Sitting in a corner to the left of the casino is a homeless man begging for spare change. (You don't want to hear what he has to say if you don't have any.) The burger joint features a bald, overweight man applying contacts. Gloom and depression seems to preside over every area of this town. Glass uses her natural props to tell us something about Maud. By always walking past the Ferris wheel, or staring into the flashy casino with a smile without ever walking in, Glass is suggesting that Maud is someone who either (a) is so focused on her work that she doesn't want to waste any time on self-indulgent luxuries, or (b) doesn't feel that she deserves to. That nurses who fail to save the lives of their patients don't deserve to be happy and have fun.
Glass and Fordesman possess an uncanny knack for turning technically mundane images sinister. Reeling from the "intrusion" of Carol late one night, Maud splashes water on her face with such force she cuts herself, and the blood swirls down the drain. At first glance there's nothing significant about this, but later on while Maud is giving Amanda a bath, she watches the water swirl down the drain with a look of surprise. Since it means something to Maud, it means something to us by extension. Damned if I know what exactly. Likewise, when she stares up at the sky, Fordesman creates rolling cloud formations that seem to be beckoning to Maud to shed her human body and ascend to Heaven. While Maud is stumbling back to her apartment from the bar, Fordesman utilizes a Dutch tilt to emphasize her disorientation and instability. Her life is deteriorating more and more each second, and not even God can rescue her. So how can she rescue anyone herself? Wallowing on the grey-colored beach, Maud is captured in an inverted shot, the obvious but effective metaphor for a life turning upside down. But Glass makes room for moments of scenic beauty, like when Maud is walking home one night and looks out at the beach to see the red and blue lights of two buildings reflecting off the ocean.
Perhaps even more striking than the visual style of Saint Maud is the soundscape Glass and her collaborators craft. Apart from Morfydd Clark's outstanding performance, it would be fair to say the second best star of the movie is the sound design, which amplifies certain noises to a degree that they take on a similar sinister significance to the visuals. Two atmospheric sounds ground the story in its peaceful seaside setting: the squawking of seagulls around the beach and a foghorn that sounds in the distance, including when Maud is lying in bed. However, the noises that feed into the unsettling ambiance, putting us on edge even when nothing particularly scary is transpiring, are the everyday ones that, like the imagery, would be mundane under any other circumstance: the clicking of Maud's fingernail as she nervously rubs one against the other; the absentminded clicking of a pen; the Polanskian ticking of a clock; the flickering of a lighter Maud plays with at random; the whistle of a tea kettle (which also gets its own close-up); the crunch of popcorn kernels as two knees rest atop them; and the squelching of blood in Maud's sneakers as she strains to walk in them. Finally, the musical theme by Adam Janota Bzowski provides the only noise in and of itself frightening, a booming score that contrasts with the quieter, whistle-like music that plays elsewhere. From a purely technical standpoint, Saint Maud is a near masterpiece.
Mark Towns' editing is one of Saint Maud's strongest assets and biggest weaknesses. Said weakness, however, might come across as more of a compliment, because the only error it creates is depriving viewers of more time with Glass' two captivating leading ladies. The pacing is exceptionally tight, with the runtime clocking in at 84 minutes and never feeling a minute longer. No scene drags, no shot is wasted, and each moment serves a purpose. The duration of every shot is remarkably brief, and each one transitions seamlessly into the next without unnecessary filler. For instance, a shot of Maud wheeling Amanda in the upstairs hallway cuts to the former giving the latter a bath. One morning, Amanda asks Maud to go into town to pick up some things for her party, and she eagerly obliges. Towns hard cuts to Maud walking through the town with her supplies, then straight to the birthday party later that night. Towns' editing is so brisk and to-the-point it could make other film editors jealous.
On the flip side, Saint Maud might have benefitted from spending a little more time with Maud and Amanda, two richly drawn, distinctive individuals joined together by a shared internal emptiness and desire for companionship. Not to mention a combustible temper as well. Take the scenes where Maud bathes Amanda. There's never any dialogue between them. During a montage, we see them talking and laughing, but their conversation is drowned out by serene music. I wouldn't have minded listening in and getting to know these women a bit more. Compelling and flawed a protagonist as Maud is, all we really know about her is that she worked at a hospital, lost a patient through no fault of her own, has carried the emotional burden ever since, and renounced her former hedonistic lifestyle in favor of serving God, utilizing religion as a coping mechanism for unprocessed trauma and remorse. That's a great character as is, but what about her childhood? Has Maud been living in this disgusting, lonely apartment since she quit her job at St. Afra's, or was she living there before that? At no point are her parents mentioned? What influence did they have on her life? Is Roman Catholicism something she adopted only after undergoing her trauma, or did her parents raise her as such, and she just didn't have an interest in practicing until she had a reason to? Maybe she was physically and/or emotionally abused as a child, and that created a crack in her psyche that the trauma of losing a patient inflamed. Unfortunately, Glass has no interest in exploring those possibilities, rendering Maud less fleshed out than she could have been. It's strange that, given how young she is, her parents don't even try to contact her, let alone her them. And what about all the friends she supposedly had? The only person who reaches out to her and makes any sort of effort to connect is Joy, who wasn't even friends with her during their time as colleagues.
As for Amanda, I didn't crave a ton more information on her life since this is Maud's story, and it's through her eyes that we witness this distorted view of the world. But I would've liked to have heard more of her story. How does she feel about having to have forfeited her career as a dancer and choreographer? Was that a career she had always dreamed of? It's made explicit she doesn't believe in God, and the answer is beyond understandable, but did she ever believe, before the cancer? Was she always an atheist, or was her contempt for the concept of Christ born from her diagnosis? And also, who the heck is Richard (Marcus Hutton)? An old boyfriend who just shows up in her life now and again because she's dying? Their relationship appears volatile. One minute she's throwing a glass at the wall and he calls her a "stupid cow." The next he's giving her a kiss and holding her hand for an extended moment. A little murky.
While Saint Maud is first and foremost a psychological character study, Glass punctuates her sometimes overly restrained atmosphere of impending doom with bursts of body horror that are cringe-inducing in their effectiveness but never lingered on for cheap "awesomeness." It's employed sparingly, and all the more disturbing and squirming for it. Whether she's nervous, invigorated by a newfound revelation, or remorseful of a recent wrongdoing, Maud turns to self-harm as a way of asking forgiveness or expressing gratitude. Glass doesn't insert body horror elements to shock her audience into staying awake and engaged (both of which she accomplishes with and without), but to unveil another dark, tragic layer to Maud's character. This is a woman so consumed by grief and guilt that she feels inflicting injuries on herself is a necessary punishment. As a misguided expression of gratitude to God for sending her to Amanda, Maud spills a bag of popcorn kernels on her floor and kneels on them in front of her crucifix. This is just an appetizer for what's to come, but the crunch of the kernels once her knees make contact is subtly discomforting. While sitting in front of Amanda's TV, for no discernible reason, she goes into the kitchen and, after some hesitation, burns the back of her hand on the stove. This leads to the most gruesome act when, to purge her indignation over losing her job, she removes her cast and begins picking at the scab on her hand and slowly peels it off. Glass doesn't blink at the nauseating realism of this visual, but neither does she rub our noses in it. Seeking forgiveness for her attempt at returning to a life of partying and promiscuous sex, Maud places nails in her sneakers and, while sitting in her bed, gently slides her feet into them. With encouragement from her religious decorations, she gives a confident smile and stands up, emitting a piercing scream. Refusing to linger on the pain of this moment, Towns immediately cuts to the next shot of Maud squelching among the unsuspecting (or plain apathetic) townsfolk.
Thanks to the uncomfortably intimate camerawork, growling score, and precise Foley sound effects, Saint Maud conjures a suffocating atmosphere of impending doom from the get-go, one that never quite blossoms into full-fledged terror. By keeping the focus tightly attached to its bizarre, delusional anti-heroine, Glass makes it clear we should not lull ourselves into a false sense of security. Quiet scenes of Maud snooping around Amanda's mansion, looking through her books and posters, or sitting in the kitchen by herself reading a book by William Blake and staring intently at the religious figures (her unblinking eyes captured in close-up) are imbued with an indiscernible air of disquiet that prevents us from getting too comfortable. However, Glass' slow burn could be argued to burn a little too slowly, failing to justify her patiently crafted buildup with the bloody, gonzo payoff a story like hers could've used. In her effort to make Saint Maud an artful horror thriller that puts the emphasis on the psychological unease and deteriorating sanity of her character, Glass proves a little more tame than some of her more successful contemporaries like Ari Aster and Jordan Peele. Those are modern horror filmmakers who recognize the value of building a suspenseful atmosphere, creating the illusion of normalcy, and going out with a bang. Glass would've done herself a favor letting loose toward the end and viciously subverting the staid mood that characterizes the majority of her film.
As it is, the body count is too low; only two characters die. Now, don't get me wrong, while I got my start in horror with the slasher subgenre, I'm not someone who believes every horror movie must be equipped with beheadings, disembowelments, and impalings to instill fear. Many psychologically driven thrillers manage to get by with atmosphere and character development, using the power of suggestion to leave their mark. But in Glass' case, I would've liked to have seen her cut loose and indulge in some carnage candy. After all, it isn't as if she didn't build up a roster of potential victims. There's the brash escort Carol, who first provokes Maud's jealousy with her affection for Amanda; Ester (Rosie Sansom), Maud's replacement who's become "good pals" with Amanda in her absence; Joy, Maud's former colleague who seems to be thriving at Maud's former profession; and most importantly, the fat, bearded bar patron (Turlough Convery) who sodomizes Maud then taunts her about the "lovely, lovely little nursie" he remembers her as. Frankly, it would've been poetic if, while he was smoking his cigarette, Maud just quietly grabbed a knife from the kitchen and shut him up. Glass opts for the high road, however, and while that's noble, it also proves too much restraint in a horror film can deprive it of some much-needed cathartic bite. (Speaking of said sodomy, Glass seems to make a point that when certain people are so lonely and aching for human interaction, they're more likely to allow themselves to be raped, a sentiment I definitely don't feel comfortable with.)
I would be remiss if I didn't celebrate the supporting performance of Lily Frazer as Carol. My senior year theatre teacher once told us, "There's no such thing as small roles, only small actors," and Frazer embodies that sentiment to a T. From the moment Carol shows up at Amanda's door, Frazer oozes sex appeal, playfulness, and unforced brashness. Just look at the self-assertion with which she shoves the door open despite Maud's insistence that it's too late for visitors. Or the sexy expression and gesture when she pops the cork off a champagne bottle. Frazer's most impressive moment is when Maud ushers her to the kitchen and implores her to stop seeing Amanda. She expresses necessary confusion and indignation at Maud's intrusion into her and Amanda's personal lives, but does so with a soft-spoken composure that makes her even more attractive. She never once raises her voice, and treats the confrontation like the nonsensical joke it technically is.
While not standing shoulder to shoulder with the most viscerally enthralling feature debuts of the modern horror renaissance, Saint Maud is nonetheless a dark, fast-paced slow burn that blends the suffocating atmosphere of a psychological character study with the cringe factor of a body horror to unforgettable effect. Aided by a pair of fully committed, complementary performances from breakout star Morfydd Clark and the effortlessly delightful Jennifer Ehle, Rose Glass takes an intimate plunge into the progressively deteriorating mind of a severely damaged soul and explores the ramifications of religious hysteria, blind faith, and above all, unprocessed trauma. Maud is someone who has experienced a traumatizing loss for which she holds herself unreasonably responsible, and has misguidedly turned to religion as a coping mechanism, believing the power of Christ can transform her from the person she once was into something divine. Something worthy of forgiveness. While Maud is sitting across from her employer, who terminates her involvement with the private agency, the woman asks, "Are you alright?" to which Maud replies, "I'm fine." The most tragic thing to consider is that if the employer hadn't just let Maud go after that halfhearted insistence, and had gotten her some psychiatric help, she may have had a chance. She may have refrained from the final "test" she ends up taking to prove herself to God.
Spoiler Alert: I'm not diving into the specifics of the ending, but the anecdote and comparison I'm about to make is a dead giveaway. Refrain from reading if you haven't seen the movie and would like to be surprised by the final, prescient scene.
In an eerily similar act of life imitating art, on April 19th, 2024, a disturbed conspiracy theorist named Maxwell Azzarello doused himself in liquid and set himself on fire in a park across the street from the New York City courthouse where former president Donald Trump was standing trial. When I had first heard this story in real time on the news, my initial thoughts were that this must've been provoked by the persecution of a man many deranged people love (I was wrong; Azzarello didn't seem to have allegiance to either Trump or Biden) and that this would be talked about for many years to come. I was wrong on both assumptions. As unexpected and horrifying as it must've been to the newscasters and onlookers in the moment, no one on the news has since mentioned Azzarello's name, talked about his life, his twisted belief system that led him to take such a drastic action, or his friends and family and the devastating effect this has had on them. He's been completely forgotten. Dismissed as just another lunatic who took his life over his own deranged, incoherent conspiracy theories. Who cares? The world goes on. And most likely that's the impact Maud's fate will have on the rest of the world. Who cares that some mentally ill, delusional nurse from a gloomy seaside town set herself on fire for who knows what reason? She lived by herself, no close friends or family to speak of. What difference does it make? The world goes on. It's basically like she didn't even exist to begin with.
6.8/10
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