Written by Michael Clawson
80/100
A shaken young nurse shrinks in the corner of a dark hospital bedroom, blood dripping from her hands, a dead patient splayed out on her back on the cot. The grim opening scene and one jolting, gruesome flashback later on concisely replace exposition that might otherwise have spelled out the original cause of Maud’s trauma-induced delirium. Which is to say that I like the tightness of Glass’s storytelling, even if it did leave me with a less than completely satisfying sense of who Maud really is or was prior to her lonely descent into psychotic religiosity. Channeling Polanski’s Repulsion, Glass roots us in Maud’s crumbling headspace with ruthless commitment (here and there, she does get carried away with her expressive film craft), while Morfydd Clark excels in balancing the tragic dimension of Maud’s arc with its more immediately horrifying elements. All together, pretty thrilling, finely executed psychological horror.
Saint Maud Trailer
You can listen to Michael Clawson and Taylor Baker discuss Saint Maud in further detail in Episode 105 of Drink in the Movies.
