Meet Clare, a seemingly ordinary schoolgirl who is as it turns out anything but ordinary. Yes, Saint Clare fully embraces the æsthetics of its near-namesakes; St. Agatha for its Catholic sadomasochism and Saint Maud for its – well, its Catholic sadomasochism. Clare is on a mission from God – perhaps; it could also be madness or self-serving ghosts – to hunt down and kill men who are rapists, kidnappers, and creeps of that order, seeing herself as a successor to Saint Joan (she of Arc). Mind you, she may want to brush up on her hagiography, for while it is true, as she points out, that Jeanne d’Arc killed thousands of men before going to her death their maleness was incidental and the English war against the Church-backed France was everything; in any case the Church can hardly be said to have feminist or anti-male leanings, the sacred feminine notwithstanding.
And so, while Saint Clare ends up without the title that seems thematically preferable – Joan of Arc films appeared in 1900, 1935, 1948 and 2019, and Saint Joan in 1957 and ’67 – it similarly struggles to find an identity all its own. For all its mature spiritual horror trappings, its roots in YA fiction become evident when it starts to resemble a low-budget teen movie. Clare, a smart and scrappy redhead who likes to snoop around with a flashlight might put you in mind of Sarah Gilman as Velma Dinkley, Sophia Lillis as Nancy Drew, or, with her killer instinct, Lindsay Lohan as Cady in Mean Girls. Her immensely charming friend Amity (a scene-stealing Erica Dasher) definitely has more than a touch of Amanda Seyfried’s Karen, and the flamboyantly homosexual theatre teacher that we meet could be a Glee transplant.
Saint Clare passes the time pleasurably enough with its pretty colours and a likeable lead in Bella Thorne, but by the time a semblance of plot begins to emerge it comes off as too little, too late, especially when the contrivances of the final act pile up so heavily.