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. Amanda lives in a big old house on a cliff top overlooking the faded glamour and tacky arcades of, possibly, Scarborough. However, her big old house isn’t one of those obviously spooky ones. There is no frantic scratching from within the walls, for example. It’s gorgeous, in fact, with modernist interiors and dazzling wallpapers but it’s also unsettling and oppressive. Everything is slightly off-kilter yet in a barely articulated way. It’s just a feeling, induced mostly by the camerawork, which can lurch unexpectedly, and the soundtrack, which is all deep cello rumbles. I haven’t been as scared of a cello since Jaws.

Back to Maud, who, most importantly, has lately found God in an extremely intense way, and believes God has a more noble purpose for her than dispensing pills and wiping bums. (We know this via her impassioned prayers.)