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LeftSideCut (3776 KP) rated Saint Maud (2020) in Movies

May 28, 2021

Saint Maud (2020)

2020 | Drama, Horror

7.4

(7 Ratings)

Movie Rating

God damn, am I a sucker for horrors that are equally beautiful and unsettling. Saint Maud hit all the right notes for me.
A big chunk of the runtime is dedicated to the extremly authentic-feeling relationship between the titular Maud (Morfydd Clark), a live-in nurse and her patient Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a retired dancer who is terminally ill with cancer. The sweet connection between the two of them is subtle but well realised, making it all the more uncomfortable when things take a sinister turn.
The religious premise is nothing new in this genre, and there is a bit of a Rosemary's Baby vibe going on, but it's execution is pretty much flawless. Maud's devotion to God is occasionlly terrifying, but her human doubt and her occasional shake in faith stops the narrative from going full blown religious fanatic, and instead touches upon mental health issues. For all of her preaching at Amanda, Maud is the one who is portrayed as lost and lonely, trying to suppress past trauma. Her character is certainly a sympathetic one.
95% of its runtime is a slow burn, one that is complimented by wonderful cinematography and a haunting music score. However, I'm struggling to think of a film in recent memory that escalates so severely in such a short space of time, when the other 5% finally hits. To say anymore would be stepping into spoiler territory, but I will say that it's beautifully horrifying to watch unfold, with a final shot that will be seared into my brain for a while.

Rose Glass has created a true horror masterpiece with Saint Maud. Her presence withing the horror genre is a welcome one, and I'm excited to see what she does next.

Kudos

Lyndsey Gollogly (2893 KP) rated The Dark Queen in Books

Jun 25, 2019

The Dark Queen

Lizzy Gomez | 2019 | Young Adult (YA)

9.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

Well written keeps you hooked. (0 more)

Brilliant trilogy

Contains spoilers, click to show

This book 3 on a trilogy.

This series was recommended to me by a friend as im doing an A to Z book challenge this year. The first book is called Z.

Quick run through.....

Z and her adoptive brother are on the run from the police wanted for murder, they are forced into the streets after their adoptive parents tragically die in a cat accident.

When cornered in a dark alley her brother is killed and she saved my a mysterious stranger claiming to be her real brother from another dimension. Oh and she's some long lost princess.

Over time she regains her memory and her family, all except dear old dad who happens to be called the dark king. While trying to find a rare ingredient for s potion to save her mother z or rather Nadya gets taken by her dad.

We pick up in book 3! Nadya had her memories manipulated by the general Allen who she thought was dead. When her friends come to save her she has different memories of them and tortures Her best friend for potion ingredients them send them all through a portal to earth. They find there way back in time to save her but lose a lot in the process!

I can honestly say I'm sad to see this end! I have enjoyed reading it and following Nadya and her friends. Victorias was so sad after all the plans she had made.

Loved seeing Nadya become the queen she was meant to be. I love Lizzy's contrast between our earth and theirs bringing some of a fairytale world into ours.

I'm looking forward to seeing what she does next!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Recommended

Kudos

Ross (3284 KP) rated Blindspot - Season 4 in TV

Jun 28, 2019

Gone are the puzzles. Now just a brain-deadening copy of 24

Blindspot started with such a strong premise - a woman found with no memory and covered in tattoos and each tattoo turning out to be a puzzle which leads the FBI to solve a crime or stop a terrorist attack. As with so many TV shows, however, the original premise of strong, isolated episodes was gradually eroded in favour of an over-arching larger plot.
Here we have that same issue, while the season 3 villain has been ousted, lo and behold a new one has cropped up to take his place. This relegates the show to be something of a low quality reboot of 24 as the team struggle with conspiracy, terrorism, underworld shenanigans and corruption to try and stop the eventual attack.
However, the producers seem to have set the number of episodes in advance and then struggled to fill the 22 episode series with quality output. So instead we get a number of rejected 24 scripts hashed out with implausible solving of tattoo puzzles that generally add nothing to the overall series. So many times, the team seem to have been staring at a puzzle for months, only to suddenly realise that if they convert the numbers to letters, turn those into chemical symbols, add up their periodic table entries and divide that by the square root of the number of bananas produced per annum in the Caribbean and lo and behold it gives the password to a Hotmail account of an international terrorist who literally just landed in the country. Almost every episode has one of these mind-farts where so much is just shat out the screen in lazy exposition. The writers should have abandoned the tattoo nonsense a long time ago as tired and exhausted.