Saint Clare, 2025.
Directed by Mitzi Peirone.
Starring Bella Thorne, Ryan Phillippe, Rebecca De Mornay, Frank Whaley, Bart Johnson, Dylan Flashner, Jan Luis Castellanos, Joel Michaely, Erica Dasher, Todd Bridges, Joy Rovaris, and Erin Eva Butcher.
SYNOPSIS:
In a small town, a solitary woman is haunted by voices that lead her to assassinate ill-intended people and get away with it, until her last kill sucks her down a rabbit hole riddled with corruption, trafficking, and visions from the beyond.
If one blinks, they will miss how fast Saint Clare‘s wastes its absurd yet empowering and easy-to-get-behind premise of the eponymous Clare (Bella Thorne), a 16-year-old Catholic school student traumatized and touched by religion (an inner voice set to trippy flashback glimpses exclaims everything she does is in the name of God) and acting as a small town modern-day Joan of Arc, working her way into isolated situations with bad-intentioned men to kill them.
Naturally, then, the opening scene is the strongest, as it follows Clare’s routine of deducing that a man persistently offering her a ride and asking for help with directions to pick up his daughter (who clearly doesn’t exist) is someone who means harm. She bravely enters the backseat of the car for the ride, with him locking the doors after making half-hearted attempts at deflection and small talk. Bella Thorne also plays the character believably, walking the line between showing and hiding fear while also conveying that, as an audience, we don’t have to worry and that she is in control. There is also a crowd-pleasing sense of twisted joy, basking in Clare killing this man. At this point, all Saint Clare needs to do to succeed is explore the character in a moderately substantial way while serving up more of these vigilante assassinations. It doesn’t even bother trying to do that.
Based on Don Roff’s novel and adapted here by director Mitzi Peirone (co-writing alongside Guinevere Turner), the narrative goes in the opposite direction, extending outward, imposing that Clare is now in very real danger because the previously mentioned victim is connected to a larger group of abusers. It also turns out that teenage girls have been going missing in this area for quite some time now (Clare is new here, a transplant student from New York), which may or may not be a part of that.
This means that Saint Clare is more of an investigation piece than anything, which quickly turns silly and baffling, resembling a CW show despite the R-rated material on display. For starters, Clare communicates with a ghost who happens to be one of her previous victims, albeit a somewhat accidental one. It not only adds nothing to the plot, but is entirely forgotten about in the second half, with even Clare asking where he went. Then there are humorous attempts at depicting Clare struggling at social interaction with her peers (like Bella Thorne, none of them look remotely close to being a teenager), including participating in an upcoming gender role-reversed stage play. There are also brief attempts at exploring her home life with her former actress grandmother, Gigi (Rebecca De Mornay), which also don’t amount to much.
The primary focus here is the convoluted story behind these missing girls, with one of Clare’s friends being the next to disappear. That mystery is far from compelling and far too obvious even to bother caring about. One look at the cast practically spoils who is associated with those responsible. The film also seems to have one last trick up its sleeve during the ending, which is left unresolved to such a degree that it leaves one wondering if the filmmakers are actually planning on making a sequel.
Admittedly, given that when Saint Clare focuses on Bella Thorne in action against despicable men, it is somewhat watchable and mildly entertaining, there is reason to believe a sequel might result in a night-and-day improvement. This, however, is a film that doesn’t deliver on that action until the climax and fails to realize it should be a character study about a serial killer, rather than everything else it’s about.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
