SAINT CLARE

***

Directed by Mitzi Peirone.

Starring Bella Thorne, Rebecca De Mornay, Ryan Phillippe, Frank Whaley.

Horror, US, 92 minutes, Certificate 15.

Released in the UK On Demand on 21st July by 101 Films

Clare Bleecker is a college student, living with her grandmother and leading a secret double life, killing problematic men at every opportunity. Initially, the film seems to be about exactly this conflict - a young woman who realised as a girl that she is deeply fulfilled by killing, but who must reconcile this with her otherwise normal life, and generally good intentions. 

If this is the lane SAINT CLARE had stayed in, or veered out of only slightly, it could have made for a visually arresting, emotionally complex and satisfying psychodrama. Instead, this film goes all over the road: the title sequence seems to promise a Gothic horror; the opening points towards something darkly beautiful and drenched in religion; the first ten minutes seem to belong to a feminist revenge killer movie; and the appearance of Bob the ghost would be comfortable in a dark supernatural comedy. And this is just the first half-hour. 

A third of the way through, the plot switches to a fairly standard mystery thriller about missing women, and stays on this well-worn track for the rest of the film. Clare’s role changes, and she changes with it – whereas her serial killer violence early in the movie is gritty and realistic, Clare the investigator becomes an action hero-type figure, capable of besting groups of men with impressive moves, overcoming being drugged almost immediately, and going from nearly drowned to fighting fit in a second.

This isn’t the only jarring element. It’s in the realist world of the mystery thriller that Bob the ghost shares information with Clare that she couldn’t have known otherwise, proving himself a ‘real’ ghost instead of a figment of Clare’s guilty imagination. And to top it off, there is a college production of Deathtrap, which is completely unrelated to the main plot and takes up quite a lot of screen time.  

The film is based on the novel Clare at Sixteen by Don Roff, and does tend to gloss over some finer plot points that the book makes clear. It also swaps the strong and unique voice of the narrator for a more enigmatic Clare. Bella Thorne plays the titular character with an intense blandness that perfectly conveys Clare's struggles with powerful emotions that seldom make it to the surface of her college-girl life. 

Thorne and her supporting cast are a pleasure to watch. Joy Rovaris, Erica Dasher, Rebecca De Mornay, Dylan Flashner and Jan Luis Castellanos are riveting and entirely believable, creating rounded and authentic characters. The cinematography is consistently excellent and the film presents detailed and rich visuals – all the elements for excellence are certainly there. If the film had stayed in the moody realms of memory, conscience and identity, or if it had been a beautifully-shot mystery thriller from the start, that potential could have been realised. On the whole, though, SAINT CLARE is a light thriller, stylishly made but spreading itself across so many genres that it never fully delivers on any one of them.  

Robyn Fraser