Before we even cut from black, whispers lull us into director Mitzi Perione’s “Saint Clare.” We are told, “Everything I have said and done has been in the hands of God.” With this proclamation repeated, we cut to Clare (Bella Thorne) lying inverted on her bed in the position of Christ on the cross, surrounded by a blanket that backdrops her like Botticelli’s Venus. Immediately, even if not for the recall based on title, one begins to wonder if we’re in store for a religious fanaticism turned horror show in the spirit of Rose Glass’s “Saint Maud.”
This introduction to the film, followed by a cut to teens singing in a church choir, would lead you to think we might be in some thematically similar territory, even if stylistically and poignantly its own. But the spirit of religious promise that Perione’s film introduces goes quizzically betrayed. What ensues becomes an attempted campy teen thriller, but without the tension or reward.
Clare finds herself in the truck of an overtly conspicuous predator, Joe (Bart Johnson), who offers her a ride. She smirks before entering the vehicle, and there’s a self-awareness to her actions that leads us to question why she’d take such a risk. Clare is a stoic smartass, and her behavior lends no exception despite the precarious situation within which she’s put herself. And as Joe predictably passes by her destination, she once again speaks the motto that debuts in the film’s opening.
They are the words of Joan of Arc, whom she idolizes for leading France’s charge against England. When her captor sarcastically questions about the fact her idol was burned alive, Clare responds plainly, “She also killed an awful lot of men before that,” to which she follows up by bludgeoning and strangling him, returning home, tossing her clothes in the wash, and joining her grandmother (Rebecca De Mornay) and friend, Juliana (Joy Rovaris) at the dining room table.
If we are to accept the threadbare strings that Perione ties between Clare and Joan of Arc, we realize that Joan’s France vs. England is Clare’s women vs. violent men. This is enforced by a flashback to her first killing, a man who terrorized what appears to be a Girl Scout troop’s camping trip, almost killing their chaperone. But Clare is not entirely cold-blooded. She’s haunted by a hallucination (or perhaps a ghost, it’s unclear) of an accidental victim, Bob (Frank Whaley), who serves as her conscience for a portion of the film.
Clare discovers that Joe may be tied to a larger conspiracy involving missing teens in the area, and for seemingly the first time, there’s a deeper investigation. This also prompts her to do her own digging, and the murky mess she discovers becomes, loosely, the crux of the film. But at the same time, “Saint Clare” wants to be a campy teen film with boy drama and theatre audition subplots to boot. But it doesn’t commit.
The vigilante murderer horror plot a la “Dexter” sprinkles into the script, but not as often as necessary, at times becoming more of a procedural than a thriller. But the moth-holed subplots of teen drama amid brutality, which recall “Scream Queens” or “American Horror Story: Coven,” are like opening an umbrella in a mist, thrusting up a shield for virtually no reason, and making the walk to the destination more cumbersome and confusing to passersby. “Saint Clare” suffers not only from an identity crisis but also from a stylistic one.
The horror elements of this film are photographed like the staged B-roll of true crime documentaries. It could be an attempt at camp, but it doesn’t push hard enough into fun or flamboyance. As we move through the film, the overwrought dialogue is equally puzzling. Thorne plays everything pretty straight and delivers a sufficient though unexciting performance for what “Saint Clare” desires itself to be. Though she’s no stranger to films in the same camp as this one, with roles in Netflix’s “The Babysitter” franchise and Sam Levinson’s “Assassination Nation,” here Thorne’s signature monotone attitude and aloof disposition aren’t supported by an environment that delivers kineticism, commitment, or even much energy at all.
Perione’s idea is not without promising potential. If only the film could muster the excitement to ramp itself up, it’d at least reach the baseline of charge needed for this kind of script to succeed. It’s a film that is quite easy to imagine being good. If not for the self-confusion, overwritten script, and flimsy direction that constantly moves the threshold of success further away, “Saint Clare” could crown itself the to-be cult classic for which it aims.
