84 minute running time so the perfect length … this was a horror movie … it has the tell-tale ominous music and sound effect cues (annoying) … it’s not dumb horror though, it touches on lots of heavy stuff like religious faith and conversion, terminal illness, sexuality, mortification (self-inflicted pain), and mental health … the lead actress, Morfydd (MOR-vith, Welsh name) Clark, is very talented… she had to be since she carries the whole movie.

This was written and directed by a woman and men don’t fare very well in this … no positive male role models here for sure. The few men who appear are wimps or creeps (incl. G-d, lol). Maud is on her own for sure.

I have a green, yellow, red rating system for movies (go, consider, stop) and this gets a solid yellow rating. It’s not good enough to rate a green, but it’s also not bad enough to get a red. If you like horror (think The Exorcist), you should definitely see it. Thanks to John Farr for the reco.

Dick Brody wasn’t thrilled … his whole review is well-written and right on the money: “… the proximity of piety to fanaticism and fanaticism to madness … The story moves relentlessly ahead, never looking to the side, as if afraid to risk breaking the anticipatory mood of shock and fear … The more significant habits of [the horror] genre are the very ones that get in the way of the drama itself: the creation of effects without causes, the stoking of particular feelings with little practical substance or psychological insight to develop them … The burden and sublimity of faith—of Christian faith—that Maud bears is emblematized rather than explored, asserted rather than experienced.”