Saint Maud-- My take on the movie with spoilers!
PLOT SUMMARY: Maud, a pious nurse thinks she can save her patient's soul. In the process of doing so, she starts to lose grip on reality.
In times of stress and when we face dire consequences, we look upon anything that can help us get through the situation.
Anything that will give us a few minutes of calm so that we may think properly. Or maybe something that will make us happy because when facing a bad situation, we find ourselves wondering if we ever used to smile or laugh because all of these emotions feel like a distant memory.
Sometimes it is the medication that helps is through, sometimes it's a few minutes of walk in a park or the beach. And then there are times that we falter and take up things that don't exactly help our health and will lead to more severe problems later on.
Then there's the spiritual and religious side that people take up that makes them look at things from a different perspective.
More often than not people recover from the bad situation and heal by taking up some solution or the other. Other times, some get so traumatized by the experience that they spiral out of control and become delusional.
Saint Maud will make you wonder if the protagonist is religious or delusional. Her actions are dubious and it is hard to figure out the extent of her dedication.
SAINT MAUD Movie Plot
Maud is a caregiver who is tasked to take care of Amanda, a woman dying of an illness. Maud tries to take care of her but Amanda is pretty much independent and tries to do what little she can do all by herself, like lowering herself in a wheelchair.
Maud tries to bond with her patient and confides in her about her enlightenment and her religious beliefs. She believes she can feel the Lord trying to make contact with her by sending vibrations down her body.
Amanda finds this hilarious and decides to indulge her by pretending to want to learn about her religion.
Maud thinks Amanda is actually connecting with her and her religion and takes it upon herself to take even more care of Amanda and that means making sure that she sees less of a woman named Carol whom Amanda pays to stay every night.
Maud literally accosts Carol and makes her promise she won't see Amanda again. Carol pretends to listen to her.
One night, Maud is called by a woman behind her who addresses her as Katie. Maud recognizes her as Joy, her friend and former colleague.
Joy is a bit taken aback to learn Maud is taking care of someone considering "what happened at her last job". But Maud insists she's fine and that the agency she works with knows about her. Joy gives Maud her number and goes in her way.
On Amanda's birthday, Maud is shown her place as just the staff at the house. But she's further humiliated when Carol attends and Amanda reveals in front of all the guests about Maud's lame attempt to keep her and Carol apart.
Amanda then also tells Maud how she was pretending to feel the Lord just to mock Maud. Shocked, Maud slaps Amanda in front of everyone.
Of course, she's fired. What made her think she could slap the boss and get away with still keeping her job?
Maud tries to ask the woman in the agency if she may try to speak to Amanda and is promptly denied to go anywhere near her. Maud becomes depressed and agitated at not being able to help Amanda.
She spies on the new caretaker and is jealous of her rapport with Amanda.
She tries to date and go to bars to find men to take home to. She spends the night with a burly man only to imagine performing CPR on him and cracking his chest open.
Maud's delusions get out of hand and she keeps seeing tiny whirlpools in her beer and in the sky.
She hurts herself in front of the Lord, as if angry at herself for not being able to help Amanda convert to her religion.
She meets with Amanda's new caretaker and tries to get her to talk and reveal about Amanda's condition but is annoyed to learn that the caretaker and Amanda are pretty much friends.
She walks away in a huff and continues to torture herself by putting nails in her heel and walking. She thinks she's doing the best thing ever by showing her devotion this way and we then see Maud levitating.
For a second we almost believe that there must be something to Maud's delusions, and that she may be the chosen one.
SAINT MAUD Ending Explained with Spoilers!
One day she receives a note from Amanda asking her to come to see her. She goes to see Amanda dying and apologizing for making fun of her faith. The next instant, Amanda transforms into a demon and makes fun of Maud and her faith. Maud will not be made fun of and proceeds to kill Amanda.
Maud thinks her mission is complete as she has "saved" Amanda. She strips and wears sheets around her like a toga and heads to the beach with a can of acetone. She douses herself in it in front of onlookers who can't wait to see what this crazy person will do next.
Maud lights herself on fire and imagines everyone falling to their knees in reverence as luminous wings sprout from her back. She thinks the Lord has finally turned her into an angel.
Well... Of course not. Amanda has seen the next instant screaming in agony as she is charred.
Yeah, Maud was no Saint nor was she turned into an angel. She just believed that being overly religious and killing people as ways of saving them meant she was good enough to be chosen by the Lord to be an angel.
Poor delusional Katie.
The movie's horror quotient is the delusion the protagonist suffers from.
Scare scale: 2.5/5
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