8 Horror Movie Villains You Can’t Help But Sympathise With

1. Maud – Saint Maud

Katie? Maud? Daughter of God? It’s about as clear to you as it is to me.

Saint Maud stunned at the Toronto International Film Festival, and left many wondering whether or not going to Sunday service was the best idea that week. We meet Maud, a palliative care worker who becomes obsessed with the idea of saving the soul of her latest client, a former U.S dancer with stage four lymphoma.

An overt atheist, dancer Amanda seems to do everything that Maud would count as sinful, and thus makes Maud’s borderline obsession grow even stronger. Losing her faith slightly, Maud decides to go on a hell-bender of an evening to her local pub and ends up drunk and in bed with an Irish man. During intercourse, Maud experiences flashbacks of the death of a patient whom she tried to perform CPR on but instead, killed.

Showing clear distress and wanting to stop having sex, the man proceeds to rape Maud instead of comforting her. From this moment on, any previous negative attitude toward Maud from the audience is immediately turned on its head. She seems completely un-phased by what the man does to her, but not only does it become clear that Maud is emotionally broken after having been assaulted, she then continues to display worrying delusions of grandeur and hallucinations.

The very final scene, and then the final shot (if you’ve seen the movie, yes I’m talking about the last 2 seconds of the film) confirms the suspicions of the audience that everything Maud has seemingly been experiencing throughout the course of the film is not what others are perceiving, and therefore likely are all happening inside of her head. For this reason, her character cannot be hated or looked down upon, as her cries for help are blindingly clear but not listened to.