‘SAINT MAUD’ STAR CHATS BIFA’S!

9th December 2020

After the golden era of horror films from the past, it once seemed that the genre is long dead and these films are nothing more than a scary date night flick or Halloween attraction– but then, horror had its second coming – and it seems like it is here to stay. Saint Maud’ is a chillingly timely addition among the current wave of psychological terrors.

The film has just been nominated for 17 BIFA’s not bad going right! Check out our chat with leading lady Morfydd Clark, who spoke to us live from Auckland/NewZealand where she is filming the new ‘Lord Of The Rings’ series.

 

Written and directed by the awesome Rose Glass (her first feature!), this British indie is a story of a hospice nurse who is afraid that she may have been possessed. Recently converted to Roman Catholicism, she gets dangerously close to one of the patients in her care – a former dancer, Amanda – that she wants to save from damnation. Soon enough, Maude is confronted by the dark beyond, subsequently exploring faith and madness as well as her own sins. Now, you guys probably getting goosebumps just reading this, so to be clear – yeah, the movie will definitely raise the hair on your arms (!) and might even give you the cold sweats, but at its heart, it’s a story of hope and salvation, which Glass boldly tackles in her big indie debut.

The film premiered to critical acclaim at last year’s TIFF before playing at the BFI’s London Film Festival – which led to acquisition by A24 for the States-wide distribution and StudioCanal for the UK and European market, which is a rare success story for an independent picture. It had drawn comparisons to The Exorcist and Under the Skin for its scary interpretation of exorcisms while, at the same time, envisioning it in an artistic, enigmatic form. Glass – a National Film & Television School graduate – had only experienced short films up until then, but her impressive final project at school ( a short called ‘Room 55’) was enough for her to attract Film4, which founded the film along with the BFI and National Lottery. In her interview with Medium on how she came up with the story, Rose shared that she drew from Martin Scorsese (Catholic themes are well-known to be prevalent throughout his films) and, in particular, his 1978’s “Taxi Driver”:

I told one exec to try and imagine Maud as Travis Bickle, if Travis Bickle was a young Catholic living in an English seaside town…The tone and world stayed fairly consistent, it was just the mechanics of the story that changed quite a bit”, she says. “I always wanted it to be an intimate psychological story told on a very grand scale.

NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED FOR British Independent FILM AWARDS 2020!

Euphoria ‘ZENDAYA IS BACK’!

‘Pinocchio’ darker and wicked with so much heart!

 

 

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