Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Saint Maud’ on Hulu and Amazon Prime, a Religious-Horror Tale That’ll Scare All Your Lights On

Oh god, Saint Maud should come with a warning label as it arrives on Hulu and Amazon Prime. It’s a real under-the-skinner of a horror-thriller from Rose Glass, writing and directing a doozy of a debut feature that surely was the darkest horse in the BAFTAs’ Best British Film race, but the nomination ain’t nothing. Morfydd Clark and Jennier Ehle star in the artsy-but-unpretentious movie that doesn’t ask if you’ll be creeped out by it, but how much.

SAINT MAUD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Something Happened involving Maud (Clark). I think it’s there in the opening shots, which imply a traumatic and bloody occurrence, although the details are smudgy. Maybe the what isn’t important, just that it pushed her to be Extremely Catholic, and now she narrates the movie in diary-like monologues to God. I’m pretty sure they’re monologues rather than dialogues, because her claims that he talks back to her don’t seem entirely credible here on the plane of the sane.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. Maud is a nurse who lives in a dingy shoebox with some roaches and, ostensibly, God, somewhere in England near the ocean. She prays very hard over her bubbling blood-red tomato soup and asks her lord if he’ll please reveal his plan for her soon, because taking care of dying people sure doesn’t seem like her righteous path to his lap, or side, or kingdom. Whatever. It’s ethereal, but “lap” seems about right, because when she feels his presence, she gets more than a little bit orgasmic in the moment. She even shares such a moment with her new patient, Amanda (Ehle), which, as one might surmise, breaks down the professional barrier between them. Maybe they’re friends, except Maud doesn’t really have any friends, because being her friend seems like it’d be too much of a chore of psychological heavy lifting.

Maud sees Amanda, a former dancer and “minor celebrity” now wracked with cancer, as her moral inferior: Amanda has both gentleman and gentlewoman callers, is a trifle of an artist and is capable of scathing cruelty (her previous caretaker describes her concisely: “Bit of a C-WORD”). “You’re prettier than the last one,” Amanda off-handedly remarks to Maud in the middle of a physical therapy session. She gifts Maud a book chock full of William Blake’s most terrifyingly vivid religious paintings. Peering through a doorway, Maud watches Amanda with her concubine, curious, eyes narrowed. Maud sometimes acts possessed, and often acts possessive of her patient, because she soon believes her righteous calling is to save Amanda’s soul. I don’t see this going particularly well, do you?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: David Cronenberg would be so proud of this movie — it has the most squidge-worthy scab-peeling horror scene since The Fly. I also thought of Under the Skin, The Exorcist and The Witch, comparisons I do not make with wanton abandon.

Performance Worth Watching: Clark previously popped up in Crawl and The Personal History of David Copperfield (and will soon play Galadriel in Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series). But Saint Maud is her true emergence, a performance exploring the harrowed fringe of sinister mental illness, a characterization that makes Hannibal Lecter look like Holly Hobbie.

Memorable Dialogue: “I daresay you’ll be seeing this one soon.” — Maud sums up Amanda’s condition in one of her many monologues to God

Sex and Skin: A couple of sex scenes with naked butts and implied goings-on that you will not watch whatsoever if you want to be turned on.

Our Take: So has talking to God driven Maud mad or has madness driven her to talk to God? I can’t answer that, or maybe I don’t want to, but most likely I just don’t want to know. Saint Maud is legit creepy, not in a wow-this-is-a-cool-movie sense but in a compelled-to-turn-on-all-the-lights-in-the-house sense, hoping that illumination will drive Maud’s disturbing-ass god the hell out of there, should he be there — and he just might?

The film occasionally indulges is-it-real-or-is-it-a-hallucination cliches — I assert that it’s not a supernatural tale — but is otherwise righteously on-point. Its right-to-the-bone direction and concise runtime don’t allow it to sabotage itself with its own dead-seriousness. It’s lean, taut and focused on the conflict within Maud, which manifests physically with dramatic urgency via her self-harm, a form of self-flagellation we frequently see in characters consumed with religious fervor, starting with some light maiming and getting more difficult to watch as it goes. There is no fun to be had here. There is only PAIN.

Glass doesn’t shy away from the type of skincrawly-goosebump fetish filmmaking (you can just feel that scab coming off, for better or worse) that renders such horrors so tangible. Maud sees herself as one of God’s agents, a warrior or prophet or messenger, but also as one hell of a sinner, and that’s exactly what makes Saint Maud one hell of a movie.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Saint Maud is a stunner of a debut from Glass, and will rivet arthouse-horror aficionados to their couches.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch Saint Maud on Hulu

Watch Saint Maud on Amazon Prime