Saint Maud (2019) | Plot, Cast & Horror Facts

Saint Maud is a 2019 British psychological horror film by Rose Glass about a palliative carer whose religious devotion turns dangerous.

At a Glance

Overview

After a traumatic incident at a hospital, a young nurse named Katie reinvents herself as Maud, a newly converted Roman Catholic. She takes a job as a live-in palliative carer for Amanda Köhl, a former dancer and choreographer from the United States who is dying of stage four lymphoma in a large house in an English seaside town. Amanda drinks, smokes, throws parties and pays for the company of a younger woman, Carol. Maud decides that God has given her a mission: to save Amanda’s soul before she dies.

Rose Glass keeps the camera almost entirely inside Maud’s experience. We hear her private conversations with God in voiceover, feel the ecstatic shudders she takes for divine contact, and watch her punish her own body when she believes she has failed. Amanda alternately humors and mocks her, and the film’s horror grows from the gap between how Maud sees herself, as a chosen servant, and how the world sees her, as an isolated and increasingly unwell young woman. That single, obsessive point of view links it to other films that trap the audience inside a disordered mind, from the dream logic of A Nightmare on Elm Street to the grief spirals of Hereditary. Like Freddy Krueger, Maud’s visions blur the line between the private and the real, though here the nightmare belongs to the person having it.

Production

Saint Maud was Glass’s first feature, which she wrote and directed after a run of short films. It was produced in the United Kingdom by Escape Plan Productions with backing from Film4 and the BFI, and produced by Andrea Cornwell and Oliver Kassman. Ben Fordesman’s cinematography sets the large, faded house against Maud’s cramped rented room and the grey seafront, and Adam Janota Bzowski’s score uses low drones and sudden swells to mark Maud’s religious episodes. Glass has said she built the film around the gradual shift in Maud’s perception rather than around external shocks. The film premiered at TIFF in September 2019; its UK theatrical release was delayed into October 2020 by the pandemic, and A24 released it in the United States in early 2021.

Cast

• Morfydd Clark as Katie / Maud
• Jennifer Ehle as Amanda Köhl
• Lily Frazer as Carol
• Lily Knight as Joy
• Turlough Convery, Marcus Hutton and Rosie Sansom in supporting roles

Reception

Saint Maud was met with acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds 92 percent from 193 reviews, and Metacritic gives it 83 out of 100, indicating universal acclaim. Critics singled out Clark’s performance, Ehle’s wit as Amanda, Fordesman’s photography and Glass’s control of tone. Danny Boyle compared its confidence to Carrie, The Exorcist and Under the Skin, and Mark Kermode named it his favourite film of 2020. At the 74th BAFTA Awards it was nominated for Outstanding British Film and Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. At the 2020 British Independent Film Awards it earned a record seventeen nominations and won two: Best Cinematography for Fordesman and the Douglas Hickox Award for Glass. In 2025 The Hollywood Reporter ranked it 15th among the best horror films of the 21st century.

Spoiler: The Ending

After Maud is dismissed and her faith begins to curdle into rage, she returns to the house during Amanda’s final days. Amanda, frightened and cruel, mocks her, and Maud kills her with a pair of scissors in an act she believes God has commanded. She then walks to the beach, pours flammable liquid over herself and sets herself alight in front of horrified onlookers. For a moment the film shows Maud’s own vision of martyrdom, a radiant figure with wings, before cutting to a single brutal shot of reality: a young woman burning and screaming. Glass uses that hard cut to deny the audience the comfort of ambiguity, setting Maud’s inner certainty against the fact of her death.

Trivia & Facts

• It is Rose Glass’s feature directorial debut, followed by Love Lies Bleeding (2024).
• Its seventeen British Independent Film Award nominations set a record for the awards.
• Danny Boyle publicly praised it, comparing it to Carrie and The Exorcist.
• Mark Kermode named it his favourite film of 2020.
• Ben Fordesman won the British Independent Film Award for Best Cinematography for his work on the film.
• Jennifer Ehle plays Amanda, a retired American dancer, giving the character a sharp, theatrical wit that counters Maud’s earnestness.