Saint Maud: Never Waste Your Pain

A24 has never failed to surprise the audience. It always brings something authentic, dark-disturbing, gripping, and visually stunning, as if it has mastered the art of poetic cinema. Saint Maud is a psychological horror film, it shows that there's a very thin line between being religious and being fanatic. The film is set on the coast of England (Coney Island, Scarborough).

Saint Maud (2021)

Genres: Drama, Psychological Horror

Cast: Morfydd Clark, Jennifer Ehle

It begins where a patient lies dead in bed, and a nurse (Maud, played by Morfydd Clark) is sitting in a corner with her blood-soaked hands, the cause of death doesn't seem to be natural nor accidental. It appears that something sinister has happened. A few days later, the movie then takes us to Maud's house, where she is praying to God for her new beginning as a private caregiver. Maud is an extremely religious girl. She doesn't have any friends, sometimes she sees and feels things that others do not (maybe hallucinations). From time to time, she punishes herself by burning her hand and walking on thorns when she does something wrong. Now she has been recruited as a palliative nurse of Amanda (Jennifer Ehle). Amanda is a former dancer. She's wheelchair-bound due to spinal cancer. 

Maud thinks that Amanda is a lost soul, but she is the one who has been lost. She tried to isolate Amanda from her friends so she could focus on her healing, but it didn't turn out well. 

The second half is sad and depressing, especially the bar scene, that scene broke my heart where she is in the bar all by herself and trying to find a company, calling her friend Joy (Lily Knight) to join but she denies (Joy isn't her friend, she was Maud's colleague in the previous job), trying to be friendly with a group of strangers. At that moment she realised that she was the loneliest girl.

Morfydd Clark has done marvellous acting. It's hard to believe that Saint Maud is the debut film of Rose Glass as a director and writer. I highly recommend this movie if you like psychological horror films.

The Books Shown in Saint Maud 

There were many books on the shelf of Amanda's house.

The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat

Little Woman by Louisa May Alcott

Lament by Bettina Von Zwehl and Josh Cohen

The book, Amanda gifted to Maud was William Blake by Morton D. Paley. William Blake was an English poet and painter. You may have noticed that most of the characters in the book's illustrations were on fire. The image that inspired Maud is known as Divine Inspiration.