Delusion and pain in ‘Saint Maud’ & ‘Censor’

This post contains massive spoilers for Saint Maud and Censor.

There are some traumas from which many may never recover. Or, perhaps, you’ve buried them so deep into the back of your brain that they eventually erupt into pus-filled sores, infecting one’s ability to conceivably understand reality from fiction. So, you meander through your existence with little grasp on how devastatingly sad and broken you’ve become. I didn’t address my sexual abuse until I was well into my 30s or never considered growing up in homes of domestic violence had completely altered my view on not only myself but friendships and romantic partners. So, color me surprised, shattered, and utterly affected by two of the year’s finest masterclasses of horror, Rose Glass’ Saint Maud and Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor. In both debut features, trauma, grief, and delusion worm their way under the skin with significant ease, provoking troubling thoughts about what it means to simply exist in the world and how the past can totally ruin you.

In Saint Maud, Katie, now going by Maud (Morfydd Clark), is a wayward soul, who’s turned to religion as a form of absolution from the tragic death of a former patient. What exactly happened, and what exactly she did, remains shrouded in mystery, only popping up in bright flashback bursts, displaying a visibly in-shock Maud covered in blood. A year later, she appears to have pulled her life together, but that’s only the her cracked veneer; underneath, she a ticking time bomb counting down. She throws herself into her work and faith, seeking prayer and a new occupation as an in-home career to wipe her conscious and her soul clean. But her loneliness is suffocating, as she grapples with being able to connect with another human being. Her new patient Amanda (Jennifer Ehle) appears to give her renewed purpose, both on a micro and macro scale, and the companionship she so desperately craves.

Yet no matter how much she wraps herself in the work, losing herself and any former identity — even a past colleague Joy (Lily Knight) finds it peculiar that she’s still in the medical field — there’s no undoing what’s already been done. Maud’s descent is smattered with renouncing her faith altogether, going to the local pub and getting wasted, and then hooking up with a scruffy bloke (who then rapes her); it’s a domino effect, swiftly sending her spiraling out of control. She swings like a pendulum, vaulting back to the cloak of extremist religion and becoming even more devout than before. But she is too far gone. When the third act hits, her delusions, very much rooted in her trauma, convince her Amanda has morphed into Satan himself, and so Maud murders her in cold blood. Swept up in a daze, believing she has proven her commitment to God, she purchases a tank of gasoline, plods along in a delirious state to the beach, and lights herself on fire. Of course, we don’t see her body burning and hear those blood-curdling screams until the film’s literal last second. What we primarily perceive is a trick of the mind: fellow beach-goers bow to her, a figure wrapped in a sheet, as if she’s blossomed into the true Saint Maud she always wanted, no needed, to be.

Censor‘s finale curdles the blood just the same. But its means to a similarly tragic end unravels in a very different way. Enid (Niamh Algar) works as a censor during the video nasty period of the 1980s, when in the UK low budget exploitation horror films were banned and pulled from circulation. It’s her job to determine what cassette tapes were just too grisly, just too disturbing, and just too boundary-pushing for a wider public release. As she and a colleague sift through seedy, lo-fi productions, she eventually approves a film infamously linked to “The Amnesia Killer,” calling into question her moral judgements around such matters. Sleaze-ball producer Doug Smart (Michael Smiley) later approaches her to review a film by Frederick North titled Don’t Go in the Church, a feature whose imagery triggers Enid about the disappearance of her sister Nina when she was a kid.

On a mission, she then seeks out the banned film Asunder, starring a young ingenue named Alice Lee, who bares a striking resemblance to her sister. Exhausted and under great emotional strain, Enid fully believes Alice is, in fact, Nina. When it comes to light producers are planning a Don’t Go in the Church sequel, with Lee in the lead role, Enid tracks down the filming location — and absolute bedlam ensues. Not only does Enid slaughter both the actor playing the film’s gnarly Beastman and the director himself Frederick, but she takes Alice hostage. Dragging her tied and bound, Alice greets her real-life parents, who stand in shock, horror, and confusion, as Alice writhes on the ground and pleads for her life. It’s the reunion she’s long for, but the price she made can never bring her sister back. Censor‘s own sense of reality and fiction bleeds together, leaving the viewer both drained from the wonderfully grim experience and awe-struck at the beauty in which Bailey-Bond depicts such a devastating story.

Saunt Maud and Censor sprout from the same roots, mangled and soured from everyday tragedies. And in both cases, Maud and Enid exemplify the victimized that have become so tethered to their trauma that the only way to survive is to give into it. Bloody carcasses and all.

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