FRIGHTFEST UK 2024: "SAINT CLARE" (2024) Is A Brutally Slick Supernatural Revenge Thriller (REVIEW)
The internet and information age have made it easier than ever for trends to spread quickly. The entertainment industry has always been driven by a series of sometimes overlapping and often competing trends to serve the diverse needs of a global audience. One of the best outcomes of this is that we now have more ways than ever to see how the same story can be told in new and different ways. This isn’t new, rather, it has become simpler and faster for influences to cross long distances and the expediency to which we get something familiar, yet creatively different. Film festivals are also a great breeding ground for this kind of film, and FrightFest UK is certainly one of them. Having had it’s UK Premiere on Sunday, August 25, 2024, “Saint Clare” starring Bella Thorne and directed by Mitzi Peirone is one such film that takes something familiar in the revenge genre and gives it a creative makeover. Is this departure a welcome one, or does it stray too far from familiar to captivate?
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
In a small town, a solitary woman is haunted by voices that lead her to assassinate ill-intended people and get away with it until her last kill sucks her down a rabbit hole riddled with corruption, trafficking, and visions from the beyond.
HOW IS IT?
Revenge isn’t just a recurring theme in horror films, it is in its own subgenre. From rape revenge to just classic retribution, the idea of victims fighting back against their attackers can be both horrifying and therapeutic for the viewer. There is a sense of justice present in these films that exist outside the realm of law and operates in what is traditionally a binary landscape of good vs bad. When these films work, they provide a mostly satisfying conclusion to what are often extreme stories of violence, abuse, and torture. When they’re at their best, they ask us to question the motive of retribution and reflect on the impact that exacting revenge has even if it is just and warranted. They force us to question the reason and impact of our actions, however, warranted they may be, and reconcile with the idea that the past can’t be changed no matter what we do to those who harmed us or the ones we love. “Saint Clare” takes a novel approach to the idea of revenge by flipping the script on the role of the victim and obfuscating the black-and-white ways in which we view the role of the hero. For the most part, “Saint Clare” delivers a solid story, engaging performances, and some interesting, but familiar twists.
Clare Bleecker (Bella Thorne) has been through a lot. Between killing an attacker at a very young age, an absent father who left home when she was five, and living with her grandmother after her mom unexpectedly passed at the age of 14. Through this trauma, Clare has also gained an ability to detect people with nefarious intentions and makes it her singular God-given purpose to take these people down, inspired by the martyr/saint Joan of Arc which is alluded to frequently. As Clare, Thorne gives a solid performance that teeters between timid shyness and John Wick levels of badassery. She is haunted/helped by her dead uncle, who tragically and mistakenly died with Clare, who clues her in as to people to take down and helps her process events even though she is the only one who can see him. This leads Clare’s grandmother, Gigi (Rebecca DeMornay) to question her sanity as well as Clare’s friends who are hesitant to get too close to her. This kind of isolation pits Clare as almost a vigilante type, keeping to herself and moonlighting as a crusader in the evening taking down ne’er-do-wellers. The focus of the film isn’t Clare’s exploits overall, but rather the events that unfold after her latest kill which leads her to discover a much more sinister system at work. Without going into spoilers, it is safe to say that many will see where the film is going before it gets there, but the journey is more important than the destination in this case.
The strength of “Saint Clare” is that despite feeling somewhat familiar it finds novel ways to surprise you either with lush cinematography and art-house visuals or the killer and ominous score from Zola Jesus. All the performances are solid and for the most part believable, even if all the characters feel significantly older than they are supposed to be here. From a pacing perspective, “Saint Clare” really clicks at the mid-point, and does avoid the common pitfall of a soggy second act which is certainly not the case here. It should also be commended that despite many opportunities to take things in a more exploitative and sleazy direction, the film carefully avoids these trappings while still eliciting the same shock value based on the themes being touched on. Where “Saint Clare” struggles is also where it succeeds in that tonally, it is all over the place. Some of this may have to do with the way the film handles the procedural aspects of the narrative and how underdeveloped and inconsequential those aspects are, as well as moving from playful to serious and darkly comedic so quickly that it could give you whiplash. This kind of tonal shifting also shows up in the plotting as well, as in Clare’s character. The film introduces ideas like Clare’s ability to speak with her dead uncle, or her grandmother happening upon her talking to herself, but doesn’t ever use this to create sustained conflict until it is convenient. This is not to disparage “Saint Clare” at all since the total of the parts is entertaining, just nothing that is going to upend or reinvent the genre. Finally, it is nice to see actors like De Mornay and Ryan Philippe in genre films as they bring a gravitas that is hard to deny, especially De Mornay whose Gigi is a fun and eccentric type that can turn on the emotion as the moment it is most needed.
LAST RITES
“Saint Clare” is an entertaining and slickly made horror thriller that puts a fun, martyr-inspired twist on the revenge genre. It struggles with tone and predictability but that doesn’t deter from the intense storyline and tastefully done action.
THE GORY DETAILS
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Written By
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Where can you watch it?
Saint Clare makes its UK premiere at FrightFest UK on August 25, 2024 with a VOD release TBA at a later date!
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