Grace

TO MOM.... These are the last words to appear on the screen after end credits for GRACE. (You see, sometimes it pays to watch the credits to the very end!) Now if GRACE had been MY baby, (We're speaking metaphorically here, of course!) The absolute LAST person on earth I would have dedicated this film to would have been MY MOM! Well, that is unless my goal were getting her to disown me! Bizarrely quirky, Uber-creepy and I would say, definitely old-school film-making, but with an extremely dark fresh twist. The psychological equivalent of walking on eggshells inside your brain while running jagged fingernails across your mind's blackboard!

...And it's a Canadian flick!

Reviews here abound with Film "A" meets Movie "B" examples. Here is my take to try a give you sense of the GRACE's impact: Director Paul Solet, at heart, is a Hitchcock wannabe of the Horror/Psychological Thriller genre. He has also been greatly influenced by classics like ROSEMARY'S BABY, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE and near-Cult Classics like IT'S ALIVE! His D. O. B. Doesn't appear anywhere I could find, but since he received B. A. degrees from Emerson college in 2002 in, get this now: FILM and PSYCHOLOGY, I doubt he's over 30! BTW, he also is credited for the screenplay on GRACE! We will be hearing a lot more about Paul Solet in the future! GRACE really gets in your brain, with that imminent sense that something dreadful and/or horrific is going to happen any second...but for the most part, it doesn't. I know there are a lot of you who flat out reject that in a movie. You'd probably be better off passing on GRACE in that case. 9*!!!

After seeing Grace I have three choices:

1) I have simply seen too many of these B and C flicks to be effected anymore. 2) Or horror filmmakers are getting lazy. 3) Or Grace is simply a bad movie.

I think it is a combination of all three in this case, but if I had to point the finger I would nominate 1, just before 2 and 3.

Grace is a pretty well made and well acted film, there just isn't too much to it.

When you go to a DVD shop and pick up a cover, you scan the title and any quotes on the front before flicking the wrist to read the summary right?

In the case of Grace, this 2 step process told me exactly what would happen in the film, start to finish. This wouldn't be a bad thing if there was something entertaining in the film, but in this case there really isn't.

There are no explosions, jokes, flashy fight scenes or dramatic kills, precious little suspense and unfortunately for a horror film nothing in the way of scares.

Put simply if you read the cover and think "Oh that would be gross", you've already been as impacted by this film as you would be by watching it.

Now how to explain the film in a way that doesn't give anything away?

As we see quite graphically in the opening moments, Michael and Madeline have finally conceived after years without success - GO ON MY SON!. Rather than have the birth at a hospital Madeline decides to use the services of a midwife named Patricia, something that her Mother in Law (M.I.L. DEFINITELY no "F") does not approve of.

An incident during pregnancy escalates into an argument between the doctor appointed by the M.I.L. and Patricia, and ultimately Patricia's actions narrowly avoid what might have been a catastrophe for the unborn child.

Only on the way home from the hospital the couple's car runs off the road, removing Mike from the picture and causing Madeline to miscarry. Against medical advice she decides to go to term and deliver the stillborn baby naturally.

This is sooooo not a movie for mothers or pregnant women to see.

After the delivery of an obviously rubber baby, Madeline refuses to allow Patricia or other nurses access to the baby, and clutches the dead infant to herself for a few minutes.

Now, everything to this point sounds (and is) very realistic, this stuff unfortunately happens all the time.

But this is a horror movie…

Patricia re-enters the birthing room to see if she can convince Madeline to relinquish the newly dubbed baby girl Grace, only to find that she is (now) alive and suckling. Apparently this was only mildly shocking, and after a short time Madeline takes Grace home to begin their new life.

I'll keep this brief from here, but it becomes a movie with two main rivals vying for Grace's attention:

• Grace is, like all babies, very demanding of Madeline's time and energy, and she becomes drained and exhausted tending to her every need. - The M.I.L. is initially unaware that Grace was even alive, having been told the worst after the car accident. As she has lost her only son she now becomes extremely (and grossly and graphically) maternal, and decides she wants custody of Grace.

I realize re-reading this that it is a bit vague, but rather than spell it out this is a film with a very straightforward (if twisted) plot that is easily predicted, and I don't want to ruin what precious little surprise it holds.

If you see the DVD cover, try not to read the back blurb, it gives away the entire film and removes any interest in the film.

In my opinion though, if you miss Grace, you haven't missed much anyway.

Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. Perfectly competent genre piece, just precious little to recommend in it.

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Well if you are looking for a gory movie, you should rather watch "It's Alive" with a similar theme, than this. Don't get me wrong, "Grace" is pretty graphic too, but the other movie will satisfy Splatter fans more. Not that it is better though, it's just more straight forward and doesn't take any prisoners.

Coming back to this one, it has one really great idea and can be summarized as a "Rosemaries Baby" meets "Little Shop of Horrors". And while that "sounds" great (and probably was a great read too), it doesn't translate to the screen. Especially considering the two movies that I mentioned above! It's a shame really, this movie being produced by Adam Green (of Hatchet fame), you could and should rightfully expect more. Speaking of Adam Green, he has a cameo in this movie that is beyond weird ... in a bad sense. I'm suspecting his appearance in a store is supposed to be spooky ... it's anything but. Unfortunately it's almost unintentionally funny ... again in a bad way!

While you could excuse those few miss happenings, what really drags the movie down (besides the slow pace), is the acting! I'm not saying the actors can't act ... but watching the movie, there is no evidence they actually can act. And it's really pivotal to a small budget movie, that it has performances in it ... It fails on quite a few levels.

I can see why people would not like this movie. First of all, Paul Solet is making satire and horror of something that people hold sacred. The very love of a mother. This is embodied by two characters. The protagonist mother Madeline Matheson (Jordan Ladd) and her mother-in-law Vivian Matheson (Gabrielle Rose).

The movie starts with a soft-core sex scene in which Madeline seem extremely bored. We soon find out she's lesbian, so it is implied she did only get a husband to get pregnant. This is also implied by her lack of care when her husband dies. The scene where Madeline for over two minutes hugs and kisses what looks to be a baby corpse was disturbing. Later on in the movie she proves that she loves her baby no matter what.

After Vivian loses her son,Madeline's husband Michael (Stephen Park) in the car accident she becomes desperate to get hold of the baby, as she does not trust in Madeline's being-mother knowledge. She shows disturbing behavior, wanting her husband to breastfeed on her, seemingly because she wants to have a child, and probably can't have one because her biological clock has run out.

Overall this is a pretty decent horror though. It has a very disturbing atmosphere to it, probably at the cost of pace. It has some moments I felt a little ill (in a good way), because of the mood and atmosphere. The dialogs were cheap. The characters were overall a little boring. Madeline was luckily the most interesting and best played character. Vivian was overplayed by Gabrielle Rose. I didn't get a grip of the husband, nothing was lost to the audience when he died. But the thing is, cheap dialogs and poorly developed characters is not uncommon in the horror genre, as I said the movie is pretty decent.

I recommend this movie to everyone who likes the trailer, and are not bothered by a slow pace. The trailer is pretty much, what you see is what you get.

"Grace", the long feature debut of writer/director Paul Solet, is an oddly unsettling but refreshingly inventive horror-drama hybrid that can't possibly be categorized into one single genre. This film is deeply disturbing, emotionally moving, darkly comical and intellectually engaging all at the same time and that is quite a remarkable thing to achieve for a young director who only shot a few short movies before, is it not? "Grace" literally baths in an unclassifiable grisly atmosphere, the detailed character drawings are unique and plausible and the concept – although rationally impossible – is nightmarishly upsetting. The announcer at the Belgian Fantasy Festival, where I watched this movie, advised for couples with young children and particularly pregnant women to leave the theater and that was definitely a good move (not that there were many), as this instant gem covers pretty much all the imaginable horrors of motherhood, like troublesome conception, intrusive mother-in-laws, alternate delivery methods, loss of husband and – worst of all – a still born baby. Madeline doesn't really care about too much except for the 7-months-old fetus in her wombs and bringing it into this world in an old-fashioned and natural way, with a traditional midwife and vitamins instead of a hospital doctors and anesthetics. When the baby stops moving after a tragic car accident, in which also her docile husband dies, Madeline is nevertheless determined to give birth when the time is due. The baby, Grace, miraculously comes out of the womb alive and seemingly healthy, but soon after Madeline's biggest ordeal comes to the surface. Grace needs blood instead of breast milk and, the devoted mother she is, Madeline does everything within her power to provide this. Meanwhile, mother-in-law Vivian tries to do everything to obtain guardianship over Grace as she's convinced Madeline is mentally incapable of nursing her granddaughter. The sequences where Madeline "sacrifices" her own health in order to feed her eccentric baby girl are simultaneously disruptive and affectionate. This is a peculiar combination of sentiment that we're really not used to witnessing in the horror genre, but it's extremely compelling to say the least. Also the sub plot involving the aging Vivian rediscovering her femininity is disturbing, but in a totally and never before experienced fashion. "Grace" contains multiple shocking moments and grueling images, especially near the end, but the violence or bloodshed is never at one point exploitative or tasteless. So, cult loving horror fans please don't start thinking this is a modern update of Larry Cohen's early 70's crazed killer baby flick "It's Alive" or you risk feeling very much ripped off. This is an often uncomfortably slow-paced and intriguing psychological drama/thriller, with stylish photography and hypnotizing acting performances. Jordan Ladd is amazing as Madeline and this was probably the first film set where she could demonstrate her talented acting capacities, because until now I only saw her in lighter horror stuff like "Death Proof" and "Club Dread". Ladd also receives superb support from Gabrielle Rose as Vivian (truly a courageous performance) and Samantha Ferris as the alternative midwife. "Grace" honestly is a movie you won't forget about easily, that is one guarantee I can give you.