A Filmmaker's Review: "Saint Maud" (2019)

I have seen a lot of these folk horror films in my short time. One of my favourite films ever is the original version of “The Wicker Man” purely because it is such a fun movie. It is something different and the way in which this sub-genre offers this almost fairytale-like and old world horror to us is still frightening yes, but it also makes us feel slightly more frightened because of the belief systems and behaviours being so far removed from our own that we could not possibly imagine them existing in the modern day. Lexicons are filled with cultish dialogue, beliefs and hierarchies rule the character structures and even the way in which death is viewed is something that seems to lack reason and logic, but is believed by a mass of small people who are succumbing to something fairly unusual. Folk horror, we have to see, is making a massive comeback after the films of Ari Aster got so big from their amazing watchability. The film “Midsummer” especially, is a film I personally love to watch time and time again because of its sheer depth and analysis into the cultish behaviour of mass crowds. We can tell that when it comes to folk horror, as it is a reality we are removed from, a lot of research and work needs to go into making sure that it sends the correct message to the audience. “Saint Maud” is a film that does that - but only most of the time. I feel like there was so much more that could be done, especially regarding the fact that the film itself is only about an hour and a half long.

The film starts off with our main character, a woman named Kate who now goes by the name “Maud” after going through a Catholic transformation. She is a carer for another woman - a woman who used to be famous. Everything is going well until, under strange circumstances, Maud loses her job and after a while, she begins to believe somehow that she was ‘chosen' to commit some rather strange and unusual cultish acts. These are not necessarily horrific in the gore sense but rather horrific in the psychological sense. They become darker and darker as Maud’s sense of worth grows stronger and stronger and though the sense of tension is there loud and clear, I do believe that the storyline could have been a bit more pushy with her ideas regarding her behaviour - what does she believe about herself? Not just with her talking to a disembodied being but more of how does she react to situations that are apart from herself or go against her beliefs. We didn’t see enough of Maud in compromising situations in which she would have to use her strength of belief to get herself out of there. Rather instead we saw her talking to herself when she was alone and in some sort of exorcist manner - floating off the ground in a way which normally one’s limbs would not allow.

In conclusion, I thought that this film had a great amount of potential, but due to its run time being so short and its themes not being fleshed out enough, once we come to the end of the film there really is not much of a surprise that she does what she does. There is a sense of relief rather; I do not know however, whether that is intended. I felt like when the film finished, there was so much I still wanted to know about Maud, so many questions that needed answering about her and I was left rather puzzled.