Kathleen Byron as Sister Ruth. I wanted to crack open her mind and watch a plume of rage come screaming out, drowning out everyone who dared to call it ‘illness.’ This deep pain and misunderstanding, the desire she felt she had to push down behind her sisterhood, the explosiveness too big for her body to contain. It overtook her in the end, literally transforming her into a pale-faced shedded cocoon of a body. In the film’s climax she emerges from the church an entirely new being, the rage having finally sucked up all the blood from within her and concentrated it in her glowing eyes that threatened to bore through us all throughout the film, hot with plans hatched and decisions made. This image of her haunts me, as do the close-ups of her unreadable face, habit-clad and staring menacingly upwards and past us, almost as if in telepathic communication with a higher being just over our shoulder telling her that she knew what to do with her feelings and her desires, and that Clodagh stood in her way.

She is metamorphosis incarnate, catalyzed by Mopu but brewing before. She is what happens when unrealized desire is taken to its most passionate conclusion: an overwhelming red haze and then unconsciousness, passion clawing its way out like an exorcised demon.

Ultimately Sister Ruth is a horror villain, doomed to succumb to this part of her, and die as a result. And I was scared of her, watching her shadow creep predatorily across the church rafters, quietly circling from above - then, suddenly, the screen full of just her eyes. A jump scare unlike anything.

But in the moment she stands in the doorway, resolute in what she’s about to attempt, I can’t help but for one moment in between the terror, feel completely in awe of her confidence, her power, and her assuredness. It would be inspiring if it weren’t so full of hate.