A24’s ‘Saint Maud’ Is the Next Great Horror Movie [Review]

Here’s the next great horror movie. A Gothic tale, very sparely told, that only flirts with the supernatural because it finds the human psyche of its main character so much more terrifying.

Rose Glass’ impressive directorial debut, “Saint Maud,” concerns a palliative care nurse (Morfydd Clark) whose latest patient is dying dancer Amanda (Jennifer Ehle). Amanda, a not-very -religious cynic, lives in an old house on top of a hill overlooking the local English town. Maud deals with her moods admirably well, and the patient notices that. A strange and coldly-distanced bond forms.

Maud is militantly Catholic. You’d almost think she’s a nun by the way she’s deeply ingrained in her beliefs. On the other hand, Amanda is somehow charmed by Maud’s, as she sees it, naive devotion. Little does she know that something happened to Maud, something we only get a glimpse of in a brief millisecond flashback — we see a body on an operating table, a lot of blood, and Maud. Something went very wrong in a past job at a local hospital, but we can only guess what happened.

Her voice-over narration speaks to God, believing Amanda was sent to her by him; inclining this is “your plan for me.” Whatever it may be. We come to the belief that seeing a young dancer (Lily Frazer) come and go inside Amanda’s room, Maud can hear the pleasurable moans seeping into her bedroom, may irk our protagonist to no ends; Amanda had a sinful life and she needs to be saved.

Glass, making an auspicious filmmaking debut, thrusts us inside her titular character’s twisted psyche. We see the world through Maud’s eyes, what she sees as bad, we are meant to see as bad. Maud’s intentions do mean to bring good to a world she perceives as sinful and her sanity does come into question many times, but not her earnestness. In a way, this is very much a film inspired by Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” and its own earnest character Travis Bickle.

The established ambiguity is not necessarily meant to be a rummaging question. We know Maud is in the wrong here, her actions are that of a deeply deteriorating mental acuity. Clark’s disturbing actions, mixed in with an amiable nature, will isolate many viewers looking for particularly likable characters. There aren’t any here. The movie runs at a short 80 minutes in length, it comes and goes, unsettling you at first and then knocking you for a loop with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it final frame.

"Saint Maud" is currently in select theaters and will be available on Epix on Feb. 12. 

SCORE: B+