10 Recent Horror Films That Didn't Insult Your Intelligence

10. Saint Maud

Saint Maud is the feature debut from director Rose Glass and what a debut it is. A tense, claustrophobic tale of religious and personal obsession, Saint Maud is not just an above average British horror but one that should earn a place in the ranks of the best British horror films of the decade.

Maud (Morfydd Clark) is a nurse caring for terminal cancer sufferer and once celebrated dancer Amanda. They both live in a small coastal English town, itself an all too familiar wasteland of unemployment, shabby arcades and miserable weather.

Maud clearly has been through some unspecified trauma (Glass cleverly allows our imagination to fill these traumatic blank spaces) and as such has found God. Quietly seething over Amanda's hedonistic life as a performer and atheist's approach to her imminent death from lymphoma, Maud attempts to put Amanda back on the path to righteousness before it's too late...

Bleak, intense and disturbing, Saint Maud is a film that pulls no punches with its representation of fanaticism, piety and fatalism. The final sequence on the beach has drawn parallels with The Wicker Man and the comparison is entirely justified.

Film 4 and Studio Canal have a lot to be proud of here, this is straight from the A24 playbook, eliciting striking performances from both leads.

Saint Maud is a sombre horror film, a stark portrayal of deep rooted trauma from the point of view of two diametrically opposed women. Glass clearly has a deep understanding of both.