Before a single image graces the screen, Saint Clare whispers a promise—low, haunting voices intone a spiritual invocation: “Everything I have said and done has been in the hands of God.” It’s a mantra that repeats, looping with quiet gravity, drawing us into something that appears profound. We cut to Bella Thorne’s Clare, posed in cruciform on her bed, bathed in soft light, a Botticelli-esque composition that makes her seem divine, symbolic, mythic. At first glance, it seems we’re entering the fraught world of religious zealotry, recalling the unsettling psychological terror of Rose Glass’s Saint Maud.
But then something odd happens: the film shifts, almost swerving. What begins as the suggestion of a meditative spiritual horror turns, quite abruptly, into a teen slasher-meets-vigilante thriller. It’s a cinematic bait-and-switch that, rather than surprising us, leaves us puzzled. Director Mitzi Perione’s feature doesn’t lean into horror nor commit to camp. Instead, Saint Clare feels like a film caught in a crisis—of tone, of genre, and ultimately of identity.
Holy Horror or Misguided Melodrama?
That opening image of Clare—resembling both martyr and avenging angel—sets the tone for a story that promises depth. When we cut to a church choir of teenagers singing piously, there’s a lingering sense that religion may be a central thread in what follows. The setting primes us for a collision between sanctity and savagery, purity and punishment. But just as the story hints at something theological, it veers sharply into murkier waters—a thriller with stabs of satire, a procedural with hints of emotional teenage angst, and a horror film that’s hesitant to truly horrify.
Clare, as played by Bella Thorne, isn’t your typical scream queen. She’s sardonic, observant, and eerily composed. When she’s picked up by a suspiciously skeevy man named Joe (played by Bart Johnson), who offers her a ride in a dusty pickup, we immediately sense something’s off. The scene unfolds with familiar beats—a predator in plain sight, a girl who seems a little too calm, a truck driving past her stop. But Clare isn’t naïve. She appears to know what she’s walking into, and there’s a flicker of amusement behind her smirk. When Joe inevitably reveals his sinister intentions, Clare doesn’t scream. She utters that same eerie line: “Everything I have said and done has been in the hands of God.”
It’s not a random motto—it’s a direct quote from Joan of Arc, the teenage warrior-saint whom Clare idolizes. When Joe mocks Joan’s gruesome fate—burned at the stake—Clare retorts, “She also killed an awful lot of men before that.” What follows is swift and merciless: Clare bludgeons and strangles him, then heads home, dumps her bloodied clothes in the laundry, and sits down to dinner with her grandmother (Rebecca De Mornay) and her best friend Juliana (Joy Rovaris), as if nothing happened.
Joan of Arc with a Kitchen Knife?
If we are to believe the allegory that Perione lays out—Clare as a modern-day Joan of Arc—it would position her as a divine avenger, executing justice in a world rife with misogyny and violence. Joan’s battlefield was France; Clare’s is suburbia. Joan wielded a sword; Clare, a sense of calm and righteous fury. The first man she kills—Joe—isn’t her only target. Through a flashback, we witness a formative moment: a Girl Scout camping trip gone awry, a man terrorizing young girls, and Clare taking decisive action to stop him. It’s here we understand that her mission started young.
But unlike Joan, Clare is not immune to guilt. The film complicates her killer persona with a recurring hallucination (or ghost—it’s never quite clear) of Bob (Frank Whaley), a man she accidentally murdered. Bob appears intermittently, a pale and awkward conscience hovering like a human-shaped reminder of Clare’s moral ambiguity. His presence suggests Clare isn’t entirely devoid of remorse. But the film fumbles this dynamic—Bob’s appearances lack impact, floating in and out of scenes like a specter of a better-written subplot.
Clare eventually suspects that Joe, her would-be assailant, may have been part of something far more sinister—a network involved in a string of missing teens. As this mystery unfolds, the narrative shifts again, trying to mimic a procedural thriller. Clare launches an investigation of her own, uncovering disturbing truths in her otherwise sleepy community. But just as the story threatens to delve deeper, it pivots again, and suddenly we’re in high school hallways watching Clare worry about theatre auditions and romantic drama. It’s jarring.
A Slasher with Subplots—or Just a Sloppy Slice?
There’s a version of this film—perhaps several—that could have worked. One version might be a sleek horror-action hybrid: a female-led vigilante film with campy gore and self-aware flair. Another version might be a searing psychological character study: a portrait of a young woman descending into madness masked as martyrdom. But Perione seems to want to make all of these films at once, and the result is a patchwork of promising threads left dangling.
At its best, Saint Clare vaguely resembles Dexter—a serial killer with a moral code, targeting “bad guys,” rationalizing murder as justice. But that comparison only goes so far. Dexter was carefully crafted with tension, psychological depth, and a strong sense of internal logic. Saint Clare, by contrast, feels like it’s winging it. The murders aren’t built up with dread or dramatic tension—they simply happen, and we move on.
And yet, the movie also wants to be a teen drama. Think Scream Queens or American Horror Story: Coven—stylized, over-the-top, full of snark and glitter. There are moments when Saint Clare flirts with this aesthetic. Characters are dressed in fashionably gothic wardrobes, the sets are lightly theatrical, and dialogue sometimes veers into biting sass. But again, the film doesn’t commit. It opens the umbrella of style in the faintest drizzle, shielding nothing, and dragging us through the story slower than necessary.
A Performance with No Pulse
Bella Thorne is a seasoned face in genre cinema. From Netflix’s The Babysitter series to Assassination Nation, she’s no stranger to blood, rebellion, and stylized chaos. Here, she brings her signature blend of deadpan cool and mysterious detachment. But the role of Clare asks for more than just calm—Clare should be simmering beneath the surface, driven by trauma, belief, and righteous fury. Thorne, unfortunately, plays her too flat. She never lets us in. The performance remains static, and without the film’s atmosphere doing much lifting, Clare’s presence fades rather than haunts.
The dialogue doesn’t help either. Scenes are peppered with lines that aspire to be poetic or mythic but land as stilted or overwritten. Some exchanges feel like they’re from different movies altogether. Characters drift in and out, and motivations remain foggy at best. The sense of dramatic propulsion—a must for thrillers or horror films—is notably absent.
Between Heaven and Horror: A Crisis of Faith (and Filmmaking)
There’s a concept buried deep in Saint Clare that, if excavated properly, could’ve yielded a standout indie gem. The idea of merging teenage coming-of-age themes with religious vengeance and a serial killer plot isn’t inherently flawed. In fact, done right, it could be exhilarating. But for that to happen, the film would need a firmer grip on tone and structure. Instead, Saint Clare stumbles across moods—somber and spiritual one moment, glib and girlish the next.
Visually, the horror sequences are shot like reenactments from true crime documentaries—lit too plainly, choreographed without suspense. If this is an attempt at camp, it isn’t pushed far enough. If it’s unintentional, then it simply lacks cinematic flair. One wishes the film had taken bold risks—gone bloodier, brighter, stranger, anything to shake off the fog of tonal ambiguity.
Despite its faults, Saint Clare is never boring. There’s something watchable about the way it almost works. You can see the cult classic it wants to become—there’s a clear longing to join the ranks of offbeat horror films that find life beyond the mainstream. But wanting to be cult doesn’t make you cult. That status must be earned through audacity, through vision, through wholehearted weirdness. Saint Clare, sadly, is too hesitant.
Final Verdict: A Saint Without a Sermon
Mitzi Perione’s directorial vision seems clouded by indecision. There are flickers of originality—a heroine who kills for justice, a haunted conscience, a Joan of Arc metaphor—but none of these elements are explored with enough rigor or flair. Bella Thorne does what she can with the material, but her muted performance doesn’t anchor the film the way it needs to. And while the movie toys with high school antics and secret cabals, it never finds the right rhythm or emotional core.Ultimately, Saint Clare feels like a series of intriguing ideas stitched together with loose thread. There’s style, there’s symbolism, and there’s even the faint ghost of satire. But without a clearer voice, a bolder directorial hand, or a script that knows where it’s going, it never becomes more than a cinematic sketch. It is a film not without ambition, but tragically without conviction. And conviction, more than anything else, is what makes a saint.
