Premise: A home-care nurse and recent Catholic convert has a few crazy ideas.
This movie is very much "my jam". It's atmospheric and sometimes visual horror more than edited and scored horror (i.e., jump scares). It even has some Under the Skin vibes to it with the general bleakness. It's not as bluntly inaccessible as Under the Skin though, which is nice. As much as I love Under the Skin, you have to work hard to watch that.
I like Saint Maud's take on how religion can be the last refuge of the desperate. Regardless of your personal views on religion, we can all agree that Maud came to Catholicism the wrong way, and it only intensifies her delusions. It helps explain both her intensity and general inability to fit in the real world. Morfydd Clark plays all that really well. Jennifer Ehle is an ideal counter-point to her. Ehle is great at characters with "withering" in the description.
Clark's visions and perceptions give the movie a nice mystery, wondering scene-to-scene what exactly is real. It allows the film to dabble in things like body horror without going to extreme into them. Instead of jump scares, the movie has moments when Maud's delusions give way to reality. Something like that closing shot, which is earned and doesn't feel cheap at all.
Verdict: Strongly Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment