Their Wild and Dreadful Rapture
Last night I lost myself in The Stylist (2020) and Saint Maud (2019) again. Afterwards, I realised that they mirrored each other, both containing moments that moved me in deeply satisfactory ways. To explain what these moments are, and what it is that I greedily take from them, we need to begin with a bowl of soup.
Early on in The Stylist, Claire sits alone at her small dining table, and eats her lunch. She dips her spoon into her bowl, holds the spoon halfway to her mouth, blows slowly and evenly, and swallows. She puts the spoon down in the bowl, picks up her glass of water, and sips. Saint Maud begins Maud heating tomato soup on the stove, the temperature rendered in a slow–motion tracking shot across the surface of the bubbling, viscous red liquid. She pours the soup into a bowl and walks the few steps of her bedsit to her small dining table. She sets down her bowl, her glass of water, and her spoon, in order. She prays. Both films make the same point. We first meet these women when they are friendless, alone in the world. Soup, as the thinnest, and most basic form of nourishment, is all they can bring themselves to prepare for themselves. It is the only warmth they receive. The films then explore what happens to Claire and Maud as they cast aside solo dining and venture out into the world, in an attempt to overcome their parlous state of affairs.
As the films unspool, their themes become more apparent. Both films are about bad people trying to be good; but they handle this in different ways. Saint Maud suggests that a patient death at work has caused Katie, a diligent if nervous hospital nurse, to cast off her identity and to become Maud, a private carer and a fervent disciple of god, now tasked with the palliative care of decadent atheist Amanda. In this film, the horror creeps in through Maud’s pilgrimage to save Amanda’s soul, regardless of whether Amanda is ready or not to acquiesce.
While Maud’s motivations are rooted in trauma, The Stylist takes the ‘bad people trying to be good’ motif further. After connecting with her client Olivia, and being drawn into her world, hairdresser Claire makes a concerted effort to befriend women rather than wear them. However, Claire’s mask is more effort than most. When Olivia arrives at the salon for her wedding hair consultation, we witness Claire appearing socially at ease. She is able to banter, to make eye contact, to laugh, and to smile, but moments before, we saw her unsettling interactions with Dawn, the friendly owner of her local coffee shop. Claire was worrying over her interactions with Olivia, and her mask had slipped. She appeared not just aloof, but mentally absent, a barely sentient body. Olivia has her own mask of course. She’s always free with her affections; but they are sustained only at surface level. She knows precisely what compliments, how many bear hugs and prettily worded thank you’s need to be deployed in order to get what she wants. She sweetens the deal with her disarming charisma, the breezy ‘OK I will love you so much if you can do this!’ text, her charm deployed to create help. No matter how prettily she does it, Olivia takes. The problem comes, The Stylist suggests, when you take from the person who has nothing to give. In these contrasting scenes, we understand why Claire scalps Olivia. She needs to create an identity, and she has chosen hair as the symbol of her transformation. This is where we find the crux of The Stylist’s horror: Claire’s badness is her blankness. She is a cipher: this is her sin. When home alone, Claire is an empty, terrifying shell.
As the films build to their conclusions, we reach the moments that demonstrate, decisively, the pleasure that I take from horror. These aren’t necessarily the pleasures that you might envisage. In House of Psychotic Women, Kier–la Janisse writes that that she was drawn to Possession (1981) because ‘there was something terrible in that film, a desperation I recognised in myself, in my inability to communicate effectively, and the frustration that would lead to despair, anger and hysteria’. Whilst in Blue Light of the Screen: On Horror, Ghosts and God, Claire Cronin explores her depression in relation to horror, explaining ‘I seek to know how I’ve felt such strong sorrow with no apparent cause and why I take such comfort in a genre about dead bodies and monsters’. But it is not trauma that draws me in and my engagement with horror is never sorrowful.
It is, in fact, quite the opposite.
When I watch horror I escape. I am… removed. My mind mutters shallow excuses to the sofa and blanket, tea and biscuits, the three cats and two kids, and leaves the building. I seek out stories other than my own, and I delight in narratives of driven women working through the most important time of their lives. This framing provides the kind of propulsive plot that I require. Then, due to our chosen genre, these sequences are heightened to extremes. The drama builds. And builds. Horror has the highest stakes; the most important moments are always life or death, whether spiritual or physical. What brings me the greatest satisfaction though, is the way that these women handle these pivotal occasions. Claire and Maud’s reasoning may be flawed, and perhaps their perception of reality may seem faulty to some, but they meet the consequences of their decision–making with bravery, and with determination. This, to me, offers a glorious kind of spectatorship.
Claire and Maud cast off their isolated lives, measured out in spoons of soup. They stage public displays of their identity, revealing to the world (what they perceive to be) their true selves. Katie transcends her trauma on Scarborough’s South Beach, she fully becomes Saint Maud, a divine being resplendent in avo–pink bedsheet robes. She drenches herself in acetone and sets herself alight, and in medium close up, in a haze of fiery pink, Maud’s golden wings splay out behind her. All around, her disciples drop to their knees, arms outstretched, and she radiates light, now more angel than saint. Saint Maud smiles, her eyes awash with the happiest of tears, her soft face raised to meet her god.
Claire takes a parallel, public path to spiritual ecstasy. In The Stylist’s final scenes, Claire has taken Olivia’s place as the wedding bride. Claire floats down the aisle on a sea of endorphins and takes her place at the altar. Charlie, Olivia’s groom, lifts Claire’s veil, and the bride is revealed. Claire is so proud: Olivia’s blonde hair is tousled, in that effortless style that takes hours of prep, her blood seeps down Claire’s forehead, where Olivia’s scalp ends, highlighting Claire’s immaculate make–up: strong eyebrows, the softest hint of blush deepening her cheeks, her lips subtly darkened and glossy. She knows this is her moment, on the happiest day of her life (as all wedding days should be). Finally, she is beautiful. Finally, everyone can see her. Her blue eyes shine.
In these moments, Claire and Maud experience absolute ecstasy. Their delight mirrors mine; I find intimacy in their happiness; it creates a proximity that endears them to me. This is what I need from horror. Not sorrow, not despair. I need joy. Even when ( especially when) the characters have drawn that feeling from the bleakest of deeds.
In the final moments of Saint Maud and The Stylist, as Maud and Claire are finally able to simply be, I share their bliss.
I crow at their dark and dreadful antics.
I partake in their wild and dreadful rapture.
Alison Peirse is an award–winning horror writer from Leeds. She has published four books / collections on horror film and television. Her latest book, Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre (Rutgers, 2020) is a Finalist for the 2020 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction. You can find her at Alisonpeirse.com.
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