Saint Claire (REVIEW) | Projector Shorts | Bella Thorne sees ghosts and kills creeps - video Dailymotion

Film Brain

Bella Thorne is a Dexter-esque killer who believes God has told her to eliminate predators in this Gothic horror-mystery that Film Brain thinks tries so hard to be stylish it becomes a muddle.

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00:00Bella Thorne has a dark side in the gothic horror mystery, St. Clair.

00:06Thorne's Claire, who has recently moved to a small town with her grandmother, Rebecca de Mornay,

00:10is a student with a dark secret.

00:13She's a vigilante who kills those who prey on young women.

00:17But she soon discovers the town has a conspiracy of missing girls,

00:20and when one of her friends vanishes, she investigates the disappearance.

00:25This is based on Don Roth's 2021 book, Claire at 16,

00:28and the film version slightly ages up the character to be a college student,

00:32but the screenplay by director Mitzi Perrault and American Psycho writer Guinevere Turner

00:37seems to struggle with adapting the book's storyline into a coherent narrative.

00:42I don't think it helps that even though the characters are older,

00:44it still has a very high school dynamic,

00:47complete with a subplot of characters auditioning for a play for a gay director that's straight out of glee,

00:52and somewhat loses the perceived innocence of the title character.

00:55There's a lot of subplots and characters that drift in and out,

00:59from De Mornay's protective former actress grandmother,

01:02who'd make a bit more sense if Claire was a younger teenager,

01:05to Ryan Phillippe as a cop who is on Claire's case.

01:09Frank Wally also pops up as one of Claire's kills,

01:12a constantly yammering postman who haunts her and serves as her conscience,

01:16who then suddenly disappears for most of the second half.

01:19All of this makes the mystery both muddled and overly predictable,

01:23with the twists and red herrings just a little bit too obvious.

01:27Perrault's direction is more successful at her writing,

01:30adding a lot of visual style.

01:32There's lots of light leaks and distorted shots through broken lenses,

01:35and there's plenty of Dutch angles,

01:38which are striking and distinctive,

01:40but sometimes are overused to the point of calling too much attention to themselves.

01:44This is especially true early on,

01:47where all the canted angles in tight close-ups,

01:49cut together somewhat erratically,

01:51can make the action hard to follow visually.

01:54I get we're meant to be disorientated,

01:56but I felt like my head was spinning at times.

01:59Thankfully, Bella Thorne's conflicted central performance is the strongest part.

02:03When Claire was a kid, she had to kill a murderer at camp,

02:06and that has awoken a homicidal sign of her own.

02:09Her devout religious belief leaves her torn between sin and guilt,

02:13and that she hears voices from God makes her compare herself to Joan of Arc.

02:17There's actually a bit where someone asks,

02:19wasn't she burnt at the stake?

02:20To which Claire responds,

02:22yeah, but she killed a lot of men before that.

02:26Claire veers between amateur sleuth and Dexter-esque avenging angel,

02:30but the film softens her morality

02:32by making sure that her victims are very evil and deserving.

02:36Thorne's sullen intensity is engaging,

02:39and even though the film is very messy,

02:40she just about holds it together.

02:43Ugh.

Saint Claire (REVIEW) | Projector Shorts | Bella Thorne sees ghosts and kills creeps

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