Saint Maud (2019)

Alright ladies and gentlemen: late last year, I watched Saint Maud and I had a lot to say about it, but I ended up feeling intimidated and soon gave up attempting to encapsulate its brilliance. However, that defeat has haunted me ever since, and so I feel I just have to talk about it, sooner or later. 

Today, I'll be taking one last whack at discussing one of the best films to come out this decade or any other, a psychological horror film to end all psychological horror films: Rose Glass's Saint Maud. When a young, deeply religious nurse named Maud is tasked with watching after and caring for Amanda, a terminally-ill actress, as her live-in nurse, the two of them find themselves becoming very close very quickly. Amanda finds Maud fascinating, especially her faith, and Maud sees her interest as a sign from God that this is what she was born to do: save this poor dying woman's soul before she leaves this world. Unfortunately, a third woman, Amanda's occasional girlfriend, soon enters into the picture, threatening to bring their intimate friendship to an end and cause events to spiral violently out of control. 

As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, this film falls squarely in the realm of psychological horror, playing the hits and often referencing genre greats like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? or Repulsion. And yet, this feels like the culmination of everything that has come before, rather than a simple retread or genre exercise. Maud's character is obviously the focus, but Amanda feels every bit as fleshed out, only moreso around the edges and between the lines of the script. Maud is, as Amanda once calls her, "the loneliest girl in the world." She used to live a wild and raucous life, not unlike Amanda, but now she's devoted her life to Christ, and she takes him deadly seriously. Her entire identity is built around her belief in a divine plan that she has a starring role in, and so if it is ever challenged, she falls completely apart at the seams and doesn't even know who she really is anymore. 

Despite her religion, she's actually fairly progressive, hinted to be possibly bisexual and no stranger to promiscuity. Her patron saint is Mary Magdalene, after all. We don't hear much of her life before religion, but there are certainly hints, most prominently in the middle of the film during Maud's sabbatical, and in the film's cryptic opening that finds Maud curled up in a ball in the corner, with her patient lying dead on the bed across the room. It's clear there's unspoken trauma there that haunts Maud every second of every day in the aftermath, leading to her clicking her nails constantly and often cutting herself, something she has always done but which now serves a religious purpose. 

Not to mention, she may suffer from sort of identifiable medical malady, most likely chronic seizures, that she interprets as the Holy Spirit taking control of her body and "touching" her, but if she does, we're never privvy to it. And on the other hand, does that explain her levitating in the air? Sure, it could be a hallucination, but it also could not. I've even heard some viewers come away with the idea that she may have become possessed by a demon of some sort, if you believe the supernatural aspect, but it's all mostly left to the imagination. 

We see things through her eyes, and the film slowly becomes less grey and urban and more wild and warm-blooded as things go on. When she begins having an episode, lights flicker, the camera begins to spin, and the lighting becomes dramatic to illustrate her frame of mind. It's during these scenes that the film is at its strongest technically, and where more than a few of the film's most fascinating sequences take place (looking at you, levitation scene.)

Her pain and suffering, whether from trauma or the wiring of her brain, make Maud so lovable despite her many, many bad decisions as things come to a close. She's a pitiable character, but god, it's fun to watch her interact with others. Amanda, though, is every bit as interesting and believable, and when the two of them come together, the results are explosive. Their relationship is so real it hurts. The infatuation and fast-tracked intimacy turning so quickly into boredom and frustration, the way the two sort of use one another for different purposes until it becomes untenable, whereupon they're quickly tossed out with the garbage; it all makes for incredible viewing. And it makes the twisted, apocalyptic conclusion hit even harder than it would otherwise.

Technically, the film is a marvel of control and patience. The way the camera dances around, the way the visuals are framed, the way the look of the film mirrors Maud's state of mind at any given time, and the incredibly subtle use of CGI to distort faces and make an occasional impossible thing happen in a gritty world that feels totally real. More than anything though, it's all the pacing: it feels like something directed by a veteran of the industry, yet this is actually Rose Glass's debut feature film, which kind of leaves me speechless. Oh, and the music is great stuff: sparse, industrial noise that keeps things stark. It more often than not sounds very Silent Hill-esque. The performances here are on another level compared to most modern "horror" films, made all the more impressive by the film's often stripped-down presentation of them, where we can hold on little character moments and everything is given room to breathe, whether we're talking the main characters or characters that appear for a few scenes. Everything feels real, period.

And that's all I want to say about it. If you're reading this, no matter your tolerance for horror, sex, violence, language, anything; you simply must watch this. From the unassuming opening moments to its horrifying final seconds, Saint Maud is not only one of the best psychological horror films ever made, but quite frankly one of the best horror films of all time. If you're a horror fan, you owe it to yourself to watch this, and then watch it again immediately after with the director's commentary track on. Highly, highly recommended, even to people who don't like horror films. And it makes for an absolutely killer double feature with the nearly-as-brilliant psychological horror Censor from the same year.