Saint Clare

Saint-Clare
Saint Clare

In a quiet town, a deranged woman is guided by words to turn murderess towards her potential victims until her last target takes her into a world of conspiracy, prostitution, and otherworldly sights. Saint Clare, a film that can be difficult to appreciate as one part is a high school drama, and the middle deals with murders. It can be tiresome and confusing at times alright.

Bella Thorne plays Clare Bleecker, a sixteen-year-old Catholic girl attending school, and has been totally over this role. Yes. This film is trying to paint the picture of someone sixteen throbbing on Bella Thorne. Clare purports to be a normal teenager but is, in fact, a serial killer, targeting filthy male animals. Clare has killed men for years and has been able to do so without being caught because she hears a whisper from a voice calling to Help her. Yes, it’s not just a voice. Frank Whalley, whose character was one of her early victims, comes back to Clare when she really needs help.

Mitzi Peirone who also directed the movie has proven to be a skillful filmmaker and even won some awards in her gofer feature film “Braid” but she tends to overdo it with odd angles for the camera and the same gets tiring fast. It’s quite evidently a way to compensate for other visual elements in the film, which is admirable but such methods tend to grow tiresome.

Performances on the whole are a bit of a hit or miss. I just thought it was hard to take any of it too seriously because, as I said at the very start of this review, the focus is extremely erratic. One might argue that more stylized editing could have added some tension which was desperately lacking in this movie. In my opinion, the biggest problem lies with the script itself. My understanding is that the original script was written by Guinevere Turner and then Mitzi revised the script, and yes it’s extremely normal to have a number of writers, nonetheless, it really suffers from it, and it certainly feels like they were writing independent stories.

Bella Thorne is not without her limitations, and this often leads her to go ‘over’ numerous times as it sometimes is bound to happen. At certain times, quietness is the best approach. This is not her role. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Frank Whalley. He does not have a lot of screen time, but the little time he gets wherever he is, he steals that scene.

I would like to say that it was a good idea to involve Rebecca De Mornay again but, unfortunately, this casting choice was not that impressive. So let’s talk about her. She is Clare’s grandmother and is currently in custody of her. Ryan Phillippe’s role was also rather interesting as he revels in being a scummy cop but again it’s hard to buy into and the tension did not seem palpable. Something else that shocked me is not just that Clare is allegedly only sixteen years old but also that in one episode she is shown completely drugged and bound, only to really defy the odds and be like the Black Widow that the Avengers fans love, flipping over chairs, throwing high kicks, clinching with triangle chokes and performing other marines’ tricks. They are rather keen to emphasize her connection with God and even suggest that she might be divinely empowered somehow.

The plot is based on the book ‘Clare at Sixteen’ which sold out in 2021 and was written by Don Roff and I assure you that it has those traits in it. A younger adult ‘Dexter’ is certainly what this novel can be called and, I can definitely see it in the movie as well.

I can confidently state that if you enjoyed the Netflix series ‘You’ then odds are that this particular novel will also appeal to you since it revolves around similar narrative structures which I assume was probably the catalyst in the creation of the novel from which the film is based though the film does not quite provide proof of that. I have not read it and have no desire to after having seen this. It has a well-developed concept but unfortunately, its execution is wanting.

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