Long before she was saving Middle-earth on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Morfydd Clark made a name for herself in one of the wildest horror movies of the past decade. Saint Maud may not be one of the movies you think of first when you think of recent horror classics, but it’s a movie that definitely deserves to be part of any Halloween watchlist.
The film follows Maud, a highly religious young nurse who becomes convinced that she has to save her patient’s soul before she dies. As she goes to increasingly dramatic lengths to achieve that end, and to purify herself, we see exactly how fanatical she really is. Here are three reasons the movie is worth checking out this spooky season.
Morfydd Clark is truly exceptional
Clark’s performance as Galadriel may have introduced her to a wider audience, but the intensity she brings to Maud is why she’s a star to begin with. The movie would feel uncomfortable but not necessarily terrifying if it had a different performance at its center.
As the film stands, though, Clark’s performance is the key to unlocking the whole film. She plays Maud as someone both deeply wounded and utterly believable, and her intensity is matched Jennifer Ehle’s much more nonchalant performance as Maud’s patient.
The film toes the line of the supernatural
Because the character at the center of Saint Maud is a religious fanatic who may also be dealing with psychosis, we spend much of the movie wondering whether the visions she sees of a world filled with demons and possession is real. For Maud, the idea of spiritual salvation isn’t some theoretical concept.
It’s grounded in very real threats in the world around her, but her instability makes it difficult to know whether her perspective is a trustworthy one. Crucially, Saint Maud is also a reminder that for all of the talk about love, there are certain parts of the Christian religion that are punitive and terrifying.
The movie has a genuinely great ending
While there’s plenty to love about Saint Maud throughout, what really makes the movie work are its final three minutes. Those final moments are best experienced unspoiled, but they represent the culmination of Maud’s arc, and definitively answer the question of whether what she’s experiencing has any basis in reality.
Clark is especially good in these final moments, and director Rose Glass knows exactly how to play with audience expectations to keep us from having too firm a sense of what’s actually going on.
Saint Maud is streaming on MGM+ via Amazon Prime Video.
