SAINT CLARE - Mark Reviews Movies

Saint Clare, Quiver Distribution

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 17, 2025

Beginning with a sense of righteous vengeance and anger, Saint Clare becomes increasingly gimmicky, uncertain, and unsteady in its aims. Co-writer/director Mitzi Peirone makes an unnecessary mess of a simple, unsettling premise.

It revolves around Claire (Bella Thorne), who attends a Catholic high school in a small town, sings in the choir, and seems an unassuming teenager (especially since Thorne is surrounded by other students who don't pass for that age range, although, given the material, the alternative might have been disturbing). Clare has a secret life and mission, though: She essentially hunts those who prey upon children.

One such guy (played by Bart Johnson) offers her a ride while she waits at an inactive bus stop, flashes a photo of a couple girls whom he claims to be his daughters, and insists that he's not a creep. When Clare gets in the car, she confirms that the man is, indeed, much more than a creep, attacks him, strangles him with his own seatbelt, and flips open her pocketknife when she realizes the job isn't finished.

This is quite the introduction to our protagonist, whom we soon learn has a long history of punishing such people, going back to the time she rescued her mother from a murderer when she was a child, and perceives her deeds with a sort of religious fervor. Clare prays, has visions, and imagines herself a modern-day Joan of Arc, convinced that a higher power has commanded her to kill and will protect her from any harm. If martyrdom is also her fate, she's willing to meet it, as long as some terrible people are out of the picture.

That's enough of a motive and a method for this character, perhaps, but the screenplay, co-written by Guinevere Turner and based on the novel Clare at Sixteen by Don Roff, adds one more detail. Clare is also regularly visited by the ghost or a delusional vision of Bob (Frank Whaley), a man who died while possibly trying to do something terrible to her. Bob's presence raises so many questions—not only about why he's haunting Clare's conscience or literally haunting her a la a wandering spirit, but also in regards to our protagonist's mental state—that it's little wonder the script eventually forgets about him for a long stretch.

It does, after all, have a plot with which to deal. It's twofold, in that Clare quickly comes under suspicion of murdering the man from the early scenes by a police detective named Timmons (Ryan Phillippe), who picks apart her phony alibi, and discovers that the dead man was part of a larger human trafficking operation. Other girls have gone missing from the area over the years, and Clare has reason to believe that a couple of her classmates might be involved.

Considering the subject matter, it's odd that the treatment of this narrative as a melodramatic mystery that feels more in line with the stuff of an old-fashioned teen detective. Much of the conflict comes down to matters of jealousy, such as how classmate and pseudo-friend Amity (Erica Dasher) worries that her ex-boyfriend Wade (Dylan Flashner) might like Clare, and other comparatively trivial things.

Does a story about a nefarious human trafficking operation, for example, really need an entire subplot about Clare being cast in the school play? Sure, she's basically an actress in the ways she lures predators, while the grandmother (played by Rebecca De Mornay) who's raising her was also one, but certainly, there are higher priorities for the character and the narrative than such a comedically minded diversion.

When the plot actually does confront and portray the severity of the underground criminal enterprise at its center, then, it comes across as insincere. Peirone is smart to avoid any kind of exploitative depiction of abduction, abuse, and assault, although the entire third act, which involves twisty revelations and standoffs and action and inconveniently returning villains, feels inherently cheap and unserious by its very nature. Just because a movie doesn't explicitly exploit pain and suffering doesn't necessarily mean that it handles those ideas with care and restraint.

In fact, the mindset of a baser thriller, as the movie is during Clare's introduction, might have suited the material better. After all, Saint Clare doesn't possess any grander ambitions than serving as a revenge tale, despite all of its religious trappings, its conspiracy plotting, and those weird complications added by the forgotten Bob. Sometimes, simpler is better, and that very well might have been the case here.

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