Saint Maud joins the ranks of Hereditary, Midsommar, The Witch & The Lodge; a movie that is primarily a chilling drama with shades of horror throughout, a formula which has shown to be exponentially more frightening than the cheap thrills of yesteryear. Rather than easy scares and loud noises, Saint Maud focuses on the realism of it's protagonists struggles to paint a more horrific reality than any prosthetics or high decibels could create. If you are a fan of the new wave of horror, Saint Maud is unmissable. Rose Glass has easily secured herself amongst the ranks of Ari Aster and Robert Eggers in the horrorsphere with this beyond impressive debut. I look forward to whatever she works on next.

Musings and details I enjoyed [SPOILERS BELOW]:
[spoiler]The lighter is foreshadowed throughout the movie, from Maud idly playing with it along the sea front, to the party guest helping light the candles at Amanda's party. Every side character in this movie also smokes, something I'm struggling to land the exact symbolism of outside of the mentioned foreshadowing of the lighter.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Maud/Katie's descent into madness is shown via spirals/whirlwinds/tornados throughout the movie. Water is shown swirling down the plughole multiple times, a tornado appears in Katie's beer at the bar and obviously the opening in the sky during _that_ scene.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Maud/Katie's past life and current life are kept very distinctly apart until the final scene when her ex-colleague comes to check if she's OK. We then see, as Maud/Katie looks out the window that her eyes are now different colours. Does this portray that her Katie and Maud personas are now one and she's fully succumbed to her religious delusions?[/spoiler]

[spoiler]The movie flips the usual trope of women being objects of desire and sex by having all male characters be literal sex objects. Katie gives the guy at the pub a handjob, she sleeps with the guy who's beer she knocks over, and Amanda only has her male friend over at the start of the movie to drink and sleep with. Cool subversion of older tropes which isn't pointed to or overly highlighted.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]The movie solidifies that all of this is a delusion in Katie's head with it's harrowing finale, but other details shown throughout also confirm that this is nothing more than a coping mechanism. For example, when God speaks to Maud, it's in a foreign tongue that I initially mistook for Latin, but it is actually Welsh. The actress who plays Maud is Welsh so it's not much of a stretch to assume that Maud herself is Welsh, confirming that God didn't actually speak to her, she was simply speaking to herself.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]The movie asks a lot of questions about the validity of religion, as well as the support structures available to those who live through traumatic life events. It's terrifying to think that people out there could suffer with PTSD and have no one to turn to. Maud (like many others in real life) fell into religion as a coping mechanism for her pain. This movie is horrifying in the sense that I could see this really happening to someone. Being unable to deal with a life changing event, and instead projecting a higher purpose on yourself to try and run from the problem, ultimately leading to the destruction of others and yourself.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]I enjoyed the parallels between Maud and Amanda's characters. Amanda has been told her life is abruptly coming to an end, while Maud is struggling to find any reason for her life to go on. Amanda is leading a life of frivolity and recklessness in a final blaze of glory, while Maud is attempting to lead a life of conservatism and modesty. Great dynamic to have, especially seeing as where the story takes these two characters. [/spoiler]

[spoiler]Man, this movie has so much to unpack considering it's fairly brief 84 minute runtime :laughing: [/spoiler]

"My Little Saviour"

Last movie I watched in cinemas before it closed again. Bloody corona! Anywhere...

‘Saint Maud’ is a new horror movie from A24 that was unfortunately advertise as something else.

New horror film
A24
Praised by critics
Hated by audiences

I think we all know the routine by now. I am aware that film is subjective, am just pointing out a familiar pattern.

While I wouldn’t say I was scared by Saint Maud, but it really did unnerve me to the point it felt kind of overwhelming. It builds up on the sinking dread rather than the next scare. So don’t just write this off as a simple horror movie, because it’s so much more than that. You could easily view this whole movie as a character study on Maud, the loneliness girl in the world. The fact that this is Rose Glass feature debut is more surreal than the movie itself.

For whatever reason, this reminded me of Brian De Palma’s 1976 film ‘Carrie’. Both movies are drama heavy character studies with a female lead, which so happen to be labelled as horror. And not forgetting the religious undertones throughout both films and the psychical effects it can have on you. A wild comparison, so let me leave it there.

This is a female driven movie, while all the men are a bunch of one note jackasses used only for sex. With this being a horror movie, it was a nice reverse in tropes.

Morfydd Clark delivers an excellent performance as Maud. Shifting between a wide range of emotions, such as delight, hopeless, and pain. Clark really made me feel sorry for the character. Jennifer Ehle, who is the type of actor that would always appear in everything and would often been mistaken for Meryl Streep, also delivers a great supporting performance.

The setting of the movie, taking place in England’s North Sea coast of Scarborough, where everything looks so damp, cold, and unkind. Despite all that, the cinematography from Ben Fordesman made use of the lighting by making the whole thing visually appealing, not only in colours, but lights and shadows.

The frightening score by Adam Janota Bzowski made the tense scenes feel incredibly claustrophobic than it already was; sometimes the music will play in sync with the scene thanks to the great editing.

Religion plays a principal theme in the movie and relies heavily on psychological horror. Muad herself is extremely religious to a point it becomes unhealthy and alienating. To her, God is everywhere. He is around us. And if you’ve been a good little saint, you might feel him move inside of you. Or maybe if you pray hard enough, he will finally speak to you. But what will he sound like? If it’s your own voice that you can hear, does that destroy years of dedication worshiping a biblical character? Is religion another form of mental illness? Some many questions that will never get a straightforward answer. That’s life though. Don’t think about it too much, because it will drive you nuts!

The last frame of this movie was the most haunting thing I have seen this year. And it was only 1 second of frame.

Overall rating: Thank god for Morfydd Clark and Rose Glass.

'Saint Maud' is an insight into a very modern, very lonely existence that is sadly only too recognisable. It's a testament to how effective the film is that Glass aligns us closely with Maud to the grisly end, because she's really just acting on her own twisted nature, still looking for that elusive personal connection that will relieve a lifetime of loneliness. Glass delivers on so many levels as a writer/director that it's hard to believe this is her debut, establishing unease through suffocating mood, she finds fright in stillness, quiet, and isolation.
- Jake Watt

Read Jake's full article...
https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-saint-maud-religious-fervour-and-psychological-horror

Full Analysis at **_Spotamovie.com_** - **Intro** - Released in 2019, while in streaming in February 2021, Saint Maud is a British movie that belongs to drama, thriller, and mental health categories. It lasts for one hour and 24 minutes, and those are intense, disturbing, inspiring and, in our opinion, a must-watch.
We can add more flavours mentioning that Saint Maud won already ten awards and twenty-eight nominations. Among those awards, it got a BAFTA as “Outstanding British Film of the Year” and “Best Actress” to the protagonist of the story Morfydd Clark (Maud). - **The Story** - Maud is a nurse who brings with her a problematic past. Then, finally, she gets the strength to restart her life after her conversion to Catholicism. Life or God offers a new opportunity to Maud. She needs to assist Amanda, a formal ex-dancer and minor celebrity, in the last days of her life.
They will get to know each other and, it seems, in the right moment of their lives. Amanda is looking for the necessary strength and courage to face death, while Maud seeks to please God and redeem her past, saving someone else’s soul. Among them, other characters will bring new decisive elements to the story. As a result, the film becomes intense, mad and painful.
Will Maud save Amanda?Or is Amanda going to help Maud? What if religion is just a part of this story? - **Full Analysis and Trailer** at https://www.spotamovie.com/saint-maud-2021-movie-recommendation-and-analysis/

**_Emotionally ambiguous, thematically complex, aesthetically daring – an exceptionally accomplished directorial debut_**

>_Qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste._ [_Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices._]

- Voltaire; _Questions sur les miracles_ (1765)

> _We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think._

- Bertrand Russell; _The ABC of Relativity_ (1925)

> _Gli uomini non fanno mai il male così completamente ed entusiasticamente come quando lo fanno per convinzione religiosa._ [_People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction._]

- Umberto Eco; _Il cimitero di Praga_ (2010)

Is religious fanaticism a form of mental illness? Certainly the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) would argue it is. However, from the perspective of the fanatic, such fanaticism is often not only logical and justified, but unavoidable; they don't choose to be fanatical, they are compelled to be fanatical, no matter how insane their behaviour may seem. The disparity between what a fanatic believes and what other people believe is the main issue examined in _Saint Maud_, the stunning debut feature from writer/director Rose Glass. Part-horror, part-psychological thriller, part-character drama, part-ecclesiastical treatise, _Saint Maud_ can be read in a variety of ways – an analysis of the interaction between faith and self; a threnody for the life of a young woman suffering a mental breakdown; a drama about loneliness; a study of the importance of friendship; a tale of possession; a tragedy about the frailty of the human body. Told mainly (although not entirely) from the perspective of a fanatical Christian, the story makes room for the possibility that, however unlikely, such fanaticism isn't mental illness at all and that God really is communicating with this person. And this magnificently handled ambiguity is the film's trump card. Disturbing, horrifying, challenging, unpredictable, emotional, and occasionally very funny, this is a film that forges a path entirely its own, and is as impressive and daring a directorial debut as you're ever likely to find.

The film takes place in a thoroughly depressing English seaside town (it was shot in Scarborough, but the town in the film is unnamed). There we're introduced to Maud (an incredibly physical performance from Morfydd Clark), a recent convert to Roman Catholicism. Exceptionally devout, Maud believes that all of mankind is amoral, lustful, and wicked, and that only by way of a true saviour can we be saved. Is she that saviour? It's possible, because God has explicitly told her that he has very special plans for her in the near future. Before being called upon to save humanity, however, Maud is working as a private palliative care nurse, explaining to God (we hear her prayers in voiceover) that she feels tending to a dying person and treating them with kindness and dignity in their last days is akin to saving their soul. The story begins as Maud arrives for her first day with Amanda Köhl (the always brilliant Jennifer Ehle); a formerly world-famous American dancer and choreographer suffering from end-stage spinal lymphoma. Amanda has a reputation for being acerbic, but she and Maud get on well – Maud admires her strength of character and zest for life, whilst she wants to help Maud let her hair down a little. However, there are certain elements of Amanda's life of which Maud does not approve – her smoking and drinking, for example, or the frequent visits from Carol (Lily Frazer), Amanda's much younger lover, and as time goes by, Maud starts to exert more and more control over Amanda's life. Meanwhile, although God continues to promise Maud that the time is coming when she will be called upon, she's started to get a little frustrated waiting. And so, facing the possibility that something hideous from her past could resurface, Maud decides to prove to Amanda, God, and everyone else just how far mankind has fallen and just how sanctified she really is.

Although Maud is a hard-line fundamentalist, Glass refuses to dismiss her as an irredeemable monster, arguing instead that such individuals genuinely believe they really are communicating with the Divine. It's the old thing about how a crazy person doesn't know they're crazy, but manifested in a more complex form – Maud may be mentally ill, but even if that is the case (and the film is in no rush to confirm that it is), then surely she deserves compassion and kindness, so completely has her mind bent reality to support her delusion. As will be discussed in a moment, Glass tells much of the story from Maud's subjective perspective, and in this sense, it's almost understandable when she sees signs of God's presence in everyday things (an inexplicable whirlpool in a glass of beer, for example) and when she's occasionally rendered almost catatonic as the Holy Spirit flows through her. As the subjective perspective communicates brilliantly, this may be delusion, but if it is, it's a total delusion that she is powerless against. In a very real sense, she cannot be held accountable for her actions.

Even irrespective of mental health issues, however, Maud is all-in on the whole Catholic thing. She tells God about how important her work is, as it allows her to "_save souls_", which is the greatest task she can imagine; she credits her recent conversion to Catholicism as reversing the downward spiral of her life, explaining that she always felt "_there was more than this_", but it was only when she became a Catholic that she was allowed to see what that "more" was. She's also a firm adherent of the Job school of faith-by-suffering, cheerfully telling a beggar, "_never waste your pain_" and later engaging in some truly gnarly DIY shoemaking.

Along the same lines, she tolerates Amanda's little digs about her life and how lonely she seems, but when Amanda turns her caustic wit to Catholicism, Maud is unable to let that stand without offering rebuke. Of course, her relationship with Amanda forms much of the film's narrative backbone, and is deeply nuanced and layered, with neither woman allowed to occupy the moral high-ground. Ehle plays Amanda as profoundly bored with her failing body, whose isolation and inability to leave the house mean she must find amusement where she can, and so she seizes on this strange, ultra-serious young woman who has come to look after her. Amanda is never portrayed as a villain, but she does regard Maud as something of a plaything and Maud's reverential and humourless attitude as something to be joked about, not with the intention of hurting Maud, but with the intention of amusing herself. Amanda, however, fails to understand that these are not mutually exclusive intentions.

As strong as _Saint Maud_ is thematically, however, where it really excels is in its aesthetic design. Glass directs the hell out of it and there's not a weak link amongst her crew – from Ben Fordesman's murky cinematography to Paulina Rzeszowska's detailed production design to Paul Davies's oppressive sound design to Adam Janota Bzowski's creepy score to Mark Towns's ambiguous editing (including a shocking slam cut right at the end that's as brilliantly jarring and thematically crucial as anything in the work of Nicolas Roeg).

Crucial to the overall aesthetic is how Glass handles perspective; most (although, crucially, not all) of the film is told from Maud's perspective, so we encounter her visions not as an objective third-party would, but as she herself does. So, for example, when she sees a small whirlpool spontaneously appear in a glass of beer, we see the same thing, and there's no cutaway to show us Maud staring at a normal glass, _sans_ whirlpool; when a towel placed near a crucifix falls to the ground for no obvious reason, we see it fall just as she does, and there's nothing to objectively suggest why it may have fallen; when God talks to her (in Welsh, no less), we hear His voice as she does, and there's no portion of the scene where we see Maud answering a voice we cannot hear.

Similarly, is it just a coincidence that so many shots of Maud are blocked with windows or lights in the background that create a halo effect, and is the shot of her walking on the beach, with a thin layer of water covering the sand, intentionally framed in such a way that it looks like she's walking on water? One particular scene near the end of the film, which I won't go into as it would be a spoiler, is especially important in the construction of a subjective point of view – what we're seeing couldn't possibly be anything other than psychosis, and yet the film has given us very little to confirm such a reading. Could it be that what Maud is experiencing is real? Is this scene confirmation that her mind has irreparably snapped, or is it confirmation that she was completely sane all along? Constructing a scene based on two literally inverse interpretations can't be easy, yet Glass does it so smoothly, you won't even realise the sharp dichotomy until it's all over. At the very least, even if we don't accept Maud's view of things, the film encourages us to sympathise with a woman undergoing a mental breakdown. There's no cynicism here – either Maud is truly in contact with God or she isn't, and if she isn't then her story is as much of a tragedy as Amanda's, and she deserves help, not condescension or ridicule.

Running only 84 minutes, it's extraordinary how much Glass squeezes into her debut feature; from the arresting performances by Clark and Ehle to the thematic complexity to the extraordinarily well-handled perspectival ambiguity to the haunting aesthetic design. Looking at issues such as trauma, faith, fundamentalism, sexuality, and human impermanence, the film has much more going on than the generic horror elements one might expect. Either a depiction of the mental collapse of a young woman or a study of the supernatural, the ambiguity might frustrate those who prefer their narratives with solid answers, but for the rest of us, there's much to embrace and celebrate here. One of the best directorial debuts I've seen in a long time, I was only half-way through the movie and I was already looking forward to whatever Glass might do next. _Saint Maud_ probably won't break any box-office records, but as a calling card, it's second-to-none, and we are going to be hearing a lot from Rose Glass in the future.