Whatever is going on in A24’s upcoming horror movie Saint Maud, it doesn’t actually appear saintly at all.
That’s one easy takeaway, at least, from this damn spooky new trailer, featuring newcomer Morfydd Clark as the title character, Maud, a healthcare worker on an apparently dark, disturbing journey which amounts to “life and death…on another level.”
Here’s A24’s synopsis for St. Maud:
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.
That holy calling, according to the trailer, involves pain and blood and some very Exorcist-like moments for the main character.
Press material for the movie doesn’t shy away from that comparison, either, quoting Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle, who said director “Rose Glass is an extraordinary talent and powerful storyteller,” and the movie “is a genuinely unsettling and intriguing film.”
Boyle went on to call Saint Maud “Striking, affecting and mordantly funny at times,” with confidence that “evokes the ecstasy of films like Carrie, The Exorcist and Under the Skin.”
Say no more, we’re in. Saint Maud floats creepily into theaters on April 3, 2020.