REVIEW: SAINT MAUD (2021)
It’s finally here! After numerous delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Rose Glass’ Saint Maud hit movie screens on January 29th. Now that it’s on VOD, I finally got a chance to watch this highly talked-about horror film, in which a nurse named Maud (Morfydd Clark), who discovered an attachment to God and Christianity, takes care of Amanda Kohl (Jennifer Ehle), a former dancer now diagnosed with terminal lymphoma. Her almost obsessional attachment to God makes Maud believes she must save Amanda’s soul, which puts their “friendship” in jeopardy. What follows is a fascinating but incredibly undercooked thriller that would’ve really benefited if its tight runtime was longer.
There are many interesting sequences and moments of character development in Saint Maud, but most of these feel like the first draft of something truly great. For example, Maud’s perception of reality is corrupted by her attachment to God. She thinks she sees “The Devil” inside Amanda since her soul has been corrupted by paying for sex, but, in reality, she is only lying in her bed without being “The Devil” reincarnated. Throughout this experience of reality vs. illusion, Morfydd Clark remains excellent during the entire film. There is nothing she is not willing to do, which makes some of the film’s best sequences feel fantastically terrifying. One involving her “spirit” lifting from the ground while fireworks are popping outside is a fantastic visual achievement that widens the eyes (and the ears). Ben Fordesman’s cinematography is stunning, especially when Maud’s “spiritual” viewpoint is shown to the audience. Maud thinks burning herself with acetone will lift her spirits and make her an Angel when, in reality, she is suffering. All of these great visual moments add to the appreciation of Saint Maud‘s best sequences, yet something is missing.
While Morfydd Clark’s performance is a true show-stopper, and Saint Maud contains some of the best visual horror I’ve seen in years, none of it *really* clicked for me, mainly because the film is way too short. Running at 79 minutes (without credits), Saint Maud has no time to develop compelling characters and instead rushes to what’s commonly referred to as “the good stuff.” Whenever a horror film wants to talk about a corrupt relationship with God and/or divinity, the character needs to be explored before anything else. The audience does not get complete access to Maud’s psyche and relationship with a higher power. Even if Clark’s performance is excellent, the audience’s relationship with the protagonist feels rather distant. Before the “scares”, a horror movie needs to have compelling characters to draw the audiences in, but Saint Maud only has drafts of compelling characters.
You can interpret Maud’s relationship with God actually being with Satan, but that “connection” should be explained and/or shown to the audience. It desperately wants to scare audiences, but they cannot be scared if they are not somewhat attached or connected to the characters. While the scares are effective, they don’t properly work because we feel incredibly distant from the protagonist. The same goes with the supporting characters: what made Maud’s relationship with Amanda click? Why is she trying to protect her? All of that is apparently done off-screen, and because of this, the audience has no access to Saint Maud‘s most important character moments. We want to be scared, but we cannot be fully immersed in the film’s visual moments since the scares’ connection is too far away. With a longer runtime, Rose Glass would’ve strongly benefited from fleshing out not only Maud’s relationship to God but her “friendship” with Amanda as well, which could’ve made the film’s climax stronger than a random visual moment and a shockingly violent scene.
Still, Saint Maud isn’t a flat-out terrible movie, just a poorly developed one. It has so many great ideas (and sequences) that are never properly explored or fleshed-out. It’s another A24 horror picture that believes it’s smart by not telling much about the film’s protagonists and rapidly wanting to scare audiences with its atmospheres. Still, other movies of that same studio, including Hereditary, It Comes at Night, and Midsommar, all had incredible character development that served the film’s “horror”. There is no excuse for Saint Maud to deepen its religious themes through its protagonists, by making its runtime longer than it is and not being afraid to fully commit to a character horror picture, instead of giving only a taste of what this film can truly be with a longer runtime. A disappointment, yes, but an interesting one to watch.
