Gripping high gothic psychological horror: Saint Maud reviewed

Saint Maud is a first feature from writer-director Rose Glass and it’s being billed as a horror film. But it’s not your common-or-garden horror film. There are no chases through woods. No one watches a doorknob being twisted from inside the room. Also, there are no maypoles. (Always bad news, maypoles.) Instead, it’s more of a character study, as well as a study of religious fervour, told in the high gothic style, grippingly, with wonderful originality and no dilly-dallying. Eighty minutes, and that’s it. (Sorkin, Nolan, Scorsese, Tarantino… please take note.)

The film stars the terrific Morfydd Clark who, I think, you cast when you can’t get Molly Windsor who, in turn, you cast when you can’t get Morfydd Clark. They are, surely, the two best young actresses around and I’d watch anything they were in. Here, Clark plays Maud, a palliative-care nurse dispatched to look after Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a celebrated dancer dealing with final-stage cancer.