Your savior has arrived!
There’s something wrong with Maud (Morfydd Clark, Crawl). This is important to identify correctly as we are with the poor girl for the entire movie. In fact, we never leave her side no matter what happens or what dark forces take over her body as they communicate with her.
Perhaps it’s schizophrenia. Perhaps her dark past, having now caught up with her, is rearing its ugly head with consequences she cannot control. Perhaps it is her own failures as a nurse to save the patients under her care. Whatever it is that has her ultimately standing on a beach in the early hours of an English seaside town at the film’s conclusion, though, will leave you gasping in horror.
But identifying it, as Saint Maud is told from her point of view, is not as easy as it seems.
Welcome to the atmospheric shocker that is Saint Maud. It’s an unforgettable journey into the dark heart of psychological horror as metaphors and symbols become the holy truth for one survivor of an unnamed trauma. Is she pious or merely paranoid?
Written and directed by newcomer Rose Glass, Saint Maud is an acetone-drenched arrow shot straight into the heart of Roman Catholicism as one private care nurse finds herself floating in her own kitchen and having orgasmic-filled conversations with someone she assumes is God.
Whatever it is that has her searching for meaning on the dark and wet streets in the coastal town of Scarborough, though, is saving her devotion toward all things saintly and good and her recent conversion for Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a famous dancer and choreographer who is terminally ill with stage 4 of lymphoma. 
Maud knows that Amanda must be saved now.
But what happens when Amanda rejects Maud and her attempts to save her? Saint Maud is that story and it is a fragile one, tottering on the brink of Maud’s own sanity as she struggles to find acceptance, whether as a nurse or as a woman, seeking companionship.
While the character of Maud seems breakable and unsteady, Glass’ movie is anything but that and it flexes often with a sturdy execution. The movie is both confident and visually stunning, engaging its audience with a vision for the pathos and the paranoia needed for the story to be sold to its audience and the Horror genre to be satisfied.
It might not be the warmest of debuts, but Saint Maud is a disturbing chiller which will leave you with an unshakable feeling of aloneness as you watch what happens to the disturbed nurse at its center.
The body horror of Saint Maud is finally now on blu-ray thanks to Lionsgate and A24.
Home Video Distributor: Lionsgate Films
Available on Blu-ray - November 30, 2021
Screen Formats: 2.39:1
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; single disc; Digital copy
Region Encoding: Locked to Region A
The debut film from writer-director Rose Glass, Saint Maud is a chilling and boldly original vision of faith, madness, and salvation in a fallen world. Maud, a newly devout hospice nurse, becomes obsessed with saving her dying patient’s soul — but sinister forces, and her own sinful past, threaten to put an end to her holy calling.
Video:
The complexity and visual richness of A24’s release of Saint Maud on blu-ray is not to be missed. The naturally lit film is especially engaging with fine details noticeable in fabrics and faces. There is an explicit fear of the dark throughout the AVC encoded 1080p transfer and it is explored with deep blacks that never lose their depth or their edges. Blues and grays are the primary colors due to the subdued color scheme but when there is a hint of red, the transfer absolutely pops with gorgeous replication.
Audio:
The sound is brilliantly unleashed in a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 presentation that never surrenders and manages to pull off quite a bit of immersive scares.
Supplements:
Commentary:
- Offered from the film's director, this commentary is not to be missed.
Special Features:
There are two supplemental items with this release: an audio commentary and a featurette.
- Audio Commentary with Writer-Director Rose Glass
- A Higher Calling: The Rapture of Saint Maud
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Composite Blu-ray Grade
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MPAA Rating: R for disturbing and violent content, sexual content and language.
Runtime: 84 mins
Director: Rose Glass
Writer: Rose Glass
Cast: Morfydd Clark; Caoilfhionn Dunne; Jennifer Ehle
Genre: Horror
Tagline: Your savior is coming.
Memorable Movie Quote: "Never waste your pain."
Theatrical Distributor: A24
Official Site: https://a24films.com/films/saint-maud
Release Date: February 12, 2021 (internet)
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: Voember 30, 2021.
Synopsis: Saint Maud is a chilling and boldly original vision of faith, madness, and salvation in a fallen world. Maud, a newly devout hospice nurse, becomes obsessed with saving her dying patient’s soul — but sinister forces, and her own sinful past, threaten to put an end to her holy calling.
