"My Little Saviour"

Last movie I watched in cinemas before it closed again. Bloody corona! Anywhere...

‘Saint Maud’ is a new horror movie from A24 that was unfortunately advertise as something else.

New horror film
A24
Praised by critics
Hated by audiences

I think we all know the routine by now. I am aware that film is subjective, am just pointing out a familiar pattern.

While I wouldn’t say I was scared by Saint Maud, but it really did unnerve me to the point it felt kind of overwhelming. It builds up on the sinking dread rather than the next scare. So don’t just write this off as a simple horror movie, because it’s so much more than that. You could easily view this whole movie as a character study on Maud, the loneliness girl in the world. The fact that this is Rose Glass feature debut is more surreal than the movie itself.

For whatever reason, this reminded me of Brian De Palma’s 1976 film ‘Carrie’. Both movies are drama heavy character studies with a female lead, which so happen to be labelled as horror. And not forgetting the religious undertones throughout both films and the psychical effects it can have on you. A wild comparison, so let me leave it there.

This is a female driven movie, while all the men are a bunch of one note jackasses used only for sex. With this being a horror movie, it was a nice reverse in tropes.

Morfydd Clark delivers an excellent performance as Maud. Shifting between a wide range of emotions, such as delight, hopeless, and pain. Clark really made me feel sorry for the character. Jennifer Ehle, who is the type of actor that would always appear in everything and would often been mistaken for Meryl Streep, also delivers a great supporting performance.

The setting of the movie, taking place in England’s North Sea coast of Scarborough, where everything looks so damp, cold, and unkind. Despite all that, the cinematography from Ben Fordesman made use of the lighting by making the whole thing visually appealing, not only in colours, but lights and shadows.

The frightening score by Adam Janota Bzowski made the tense scenes feel incredibly claustrophobic than it already was; sometimes the music will play in sync with the scene thanks to the great editing.

Religion plays a principal theme in the movie and relies heavily on psychological horror. Muad herself is extremely religious to a point it becomes unhealthy and alienating. To her, God is everywhere. He is around us. And if you’ve been a good little saint, you might feel him move inside of you. Or maybe if you pray hard enough, he will finally speak to you. But what will he sound like? If it’s your own voice that you can hear, does that destroy years of dedication worshiping a biblical character? Is religion another form of mental illness? Some many questions that will never get a straightforward answer. That’s life though. Don’t think about it too much, because it will drive you nuts!

The last frame of this movie was the most haunting thing I have seen this year. And it was only 1 second of frame.

Overall rating: Thank god for Morfydd Clark and Rose Glass.