Dan Abel’s review published on Letterboxd:
Katie, a nurse, suffers a traumatic experience when she loses a patient regardless of her attempt to revive them. Some time later we catch up with her. She's now a devout Catholic and working as a live-in caregiver for a private service. She goes by the name Maud. Her new patient is an ex dancer and a small time celebrity with a terminal disease named Amanda. As they grow closer the true intent behind Maud's turn to religion unravels.
Saint Maud is one of those films that I have been anxiously awaiting. I saw many of my Letterboxd friends rate and review it over the past year while I waited patiently for it to come to streaming services. Today was the day.
Maud is a conflicted woman with mental problems and it's magnified by her obsession with her religion and the thought of how her choices play under god's watchful eye. Morfydd Clark is great in the title role of Maud. Her facial expressions, awkward demeanor, and haggard appearance play wonderfully on screen. If the rest of the film could live up to her performance we'd have a gem on our hands. Unfortunately it's not the case and that's where the positives end. The plot had so much promise to take it's fairly original premise and run with it in a supernatural direction. Instead it puttered along with the mental illness angle that concluded with an ending that wasn't entirely terrible but didn't lend a hand in booting the film above the mediocrity of the hour and a half before it.
Saint Maud isn't anything like what I'd expected. The only media I saw leading up to it is two still images, one is the cover art with Maud in a white gown with her arms splayed like Jesus on the cross and one with her levitating with an arched back. The latter led me to assume this must be a possession flick, and boy do I love those! Unfortunately we don't get that. We get a slow burn that feeds you just enough to keep you intrigued throughout it's first act only to stall after that. If you like character studies with a bit of a misleading twist this is for you. If you are expecting a horror film it's probably not for you. Not only was I disappointed but I wasted an additional 25 minutes on this shit by looking at a FoundFlix explanation video on YouTube, just to see if there was something I missed. Sadly I didn't miss a thing.
While there are many questions raised by Saint Maud , most of which go unanswered, my main concern was, is that a fake Coney Island? Not exactly. It's that bootleg Coney Island in Ireland. The disappointing one that ironically fits as the setting for this disappointing pile. Bah!
