What do you get when you mix a Christian fanatic with a retired dancer who has cancer and wants to just enjoy her final days? If you answered a lot of chaos, you’d be right. Director Rose Glass’ feature film “Saint Maud” had its streaming release nearly a month ago, originally slated for Easter 2020 in theaters. How holy. After making its rounds throughout the world, most people had the same general idea: it’s messed up. 

This isn’t shocking for an A24 film, arthouse and indie film utilizing the weird to burrow their way into our minds, and it sure does work. This British psychological horror film will not get out of my head. “Saint Maud” follows a recent Christian convert who is a private caretaker, working with extremely ill patients in their home. When she is hired to work with Amanda, a ‘minor celebrity’ in the dance and art world who likes to make the most of life in terms of booze, partying and sex, her caretaker Maud soon believes it is her sacred duty to save this woman’s lost soul. WILD, right? Even Amanda doesn’t like the thought, and would rather have control over her own body as much as she could just like she did in her dancing career. Floating between what Maud sees as a sinful independence and an overstepping Christian dependency for Amanda, tension rises as saving and redeeming the ill woman’s soul becomes Maud’s singular motive; an obsession with no bounds. 

Where do I even begin with this? There are so many layers and interwoven criticisms within “Saint Maud” that move subtly but linger in the audience. Nothing is really safe under Rose Glass’ lens: sexuality, femininity, saviorism, mental illness, religion, the power dynamics in caring for someone that mixes with religion in an unsavory manner, life, death. To compound this with Maud’s devout lifestyle only worsens it; what she sees as rose-tinted opportunity, we see as overstepping extremely inappropriate boundaries. We watch as she grows into this Saint herself, slowly and painfully. 

Perhaps one of the most intriguing parts of this film is where our sympathies as audiences are forced to lay. I felt the same way towards Maud the way that I would a 5 year old, unfair to both her and the 5 year old. Her obsession and past trauma made it feel like she didn’t know what she was doing, couldn’t help herself, yet she had people willing to talk to her or teach her how to enjoy life without God. The beginning half of the film is painfully slow, but forced me as an audience to see the mundanity of her life, her loneliness and awkwardness. I wanted to scoop her up and put her on a different path, but it seemed impossible. She was going to be self-destructive whether we liked it or not. And of course we feel for Amanda, who is such a lovely spirit in and of herself, this sympathy always clashing with our sympathies for Maud whenever they are in contact. Sure, Maud needs some guidance, but Amanda doesn’t deserve to have to be that guidance, which winds up becoming more religiously inclined than a loosening up of Maud’s character. 

Though the beginning part of the film is extremely tense and suspenseful, the revelation of the film’s latter half is well worth the wait. We are forced to ask if these things Maud experiences are really happening, or if she is imagining them herself- how strong is our own faith in her? In great A24 fashion, we are left on the same note, just to the point of it boiling over: we see the reality of fanatic obsession, a final answer as to what constitutes Maud’s reality and our own. It’s quick, terrifying, and worth rewinding for again and again to catch. 

I would suggest this film to anyone who likes great tension and suspense. Though there is a jump scare or two, and a smattering of fake blood here and there, I believe that you don’t even have to be a horror fan to enjoy this one. Its commentary on Christian fanaticism in the scope of caregiving and defining a line between care and belief imposition makes “Saint Maud” a meaningful and searing film worth the watch. As Rose Glass’ first feature film, I am truly looking forward to seeing what she will bring to the film world next. 

Rating: 4 out of 5 William Blake Paintings