Saint Maud Review
★★★★☆
A troubled palliative care worker develops an obsession with her patient, believing her newfound faith can save her soul…
Good, effective horror doesn’t always need ghosts and ghouls. Sometimes the best, most haunting stuff can be found from within. Rose Glass makes a strong case for this sentiment with Saint Maud, her frighteningly brilliant psychological chiller that deftly combines genre scares with something far more unsettling.
On the modern genre scale, ranging between The Conjuring movies and something like Hereditary, this definitely leans more towards the latter. Glass demonstrates patience and poise, wisely forgoing cheap jump scares in favour of a slow and painful descent into desolation. Ambiguity adds a shroud of the supernatural, just enough doubt to distract from the tangible human horrors at its core.
That human horror manifests in the form of the recently born-again titular Saint, played quite magnificently by Morfydd Clark, better known these days as Amazon’s answer to Galadriel. Clark is barely recognisable as The Ring of Power’s ethereal warrior queen, demonstrating eye-opening versatility as a broken woman, a lost soul turning to faith in a desperate, last-ditch effort to find a modicum of happiness and meaning.
She’d never know it, but Maud isn’t anywhere near as alone as she thinks, and that’s the real lingering horror. Saint Maud is a startling examination of today’s age of heightened awareness surrounding mental health, the decline of religion as an existential crutch, and the seemingly futile battle to live a good and meaningful life.
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