Lady Godiva was a freedom rider

And then there's Maud(e)

In Saint Maud, the psychological-thriller-slash-horror debut film from Rose Glass, we never see Maud go to church. She has a shrine in her little efficiency apartment and a little medal of Mary Magdalene that she bought “online.” There’s a small nod to this absence when she is reading out loud a passage about William Blake and his distrust of “organized religion” to which Maud says “huh!” But that’s about it.

Is this a problem? Not really. Despite its title and Maud’s religious gestures, Saint Maud is not about religion and it doesn’t really have anything to say on that score. Maud’s problem isn’t that she’s a religious fanatic but that she’s so lonely she’s going to increasingly insane lengths just to make contact with something, even if that something is just herself. It’s just that the normal ways people act in movies—sex, drugs, and alcohol—when they are that lonely are (mostly) closed off to her thanks to some unspecified past event.

So while the most wince-inducing scene comes wh…