SAINT CLARE (2024)

4 stars

101 Films. Digital. 21st July

Clare (Bella Thorne) is sitting at the bus stop, waiting for a bus that isn’t coming. Her phone is dead. A man in a car pulls up and claims he is looking for somewhere as he has to pick up one of his daughters. He offers her money to help him find his way. She accepts the lift, but things seem off. 

We get flashbacks to a younger Clare killing an attacker at a camp. 

The driver even offers her a flask of booze. She turns on him, strangles him and causes him to crash. She clearly knows what she is doing as she cleans up the scene and leaves him for dead. She has voices in her head and believes what she is doing is in the name of God – as she is a serial killer that only targets bad people (a la Dexter) and is inspired by Joan of Arc.

Clare lives with her weed smoking grandmother Arlene (Rebecca De Mornay), a former actress, as her parents are dead. The teen killer is haunted by mailman Bob (Frank Whaley), who she witnessed dying, but wasn’t one of her victims – acts as her conscience and warns her that the man she kill earlier was not acting alone. This will prove to be important later. 

Whilst at a party, Clare finds a series of Polaroids, and realises the girls in the photos are ones that have gone missing locally, and she decides to start looking into it – potentially putting herself in danger. Meanwhile Detective Timmons (Ryan Phillippe) is investigating the killing she was responsible for…

Thorne is terrific in the lead even if she is rather older than the part she is portraying. Whaley is amusing as the ever present mailman with their great interplay a highlight. Stylishly directed by Mitzi Peirone working from a complex, sometimes confusing, script co-written with Guinevere Turner and based on the novel ‘Clare at Sixteen’ by Don Roff. Also notable is Rebecca De Mornay as the cool grandparent. The film is well shot by Luka Bazeli. 

Steve Kirkham