In ‘Saint Maud,' is a Visceral Psychological Horror

Religion and horror are hardly novel bedfellows, but writer-director Rose Glass crafts something fresh of the construct in her promising debut “ Saint Maud.” The film follows the psychological undoing of a devout hospice nurse who becomes obsessed with saving the soul of her terminally ill patient.

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An uneasy and slightly sinister mood is established right from the start and barely lets up for the duration. Lean and measured, Glass’ film drops the audience in the middle of a bloody mess, although it’s ambiguous at first as to whether or not we’re seeing the beginning or the end. There’s a body on an operating table and a young woman in the corner with her face covered in blood. The next image we see is a close-up of boiling tomato soup in a grim and claustrophobic studio apartment in the seaside hamlet Coney Island (in Northern Ireland, not New York). The woman there, Maud (Morfydd Clark), is packing up to leave.