Grace: Possession

POV or point of view or call it whatever you want, it's something I will never get why you would want to shoot a movie like that. I can't stand that first person view, the only time I can stand it is when I play a first person shooter game on my console. In a movie it's just a technique that doesn't work. In fact I never saw a good movie made like that and I watch a lot of movies. The story itself is also pretty lame. When I read possession in the title I imagine immediately things like in the classic The Exorcist (1973) from William Friedkin. In that movie Linda Blair gave the best possessed performance ever and the special effects for that time were pretty good and special. For this movie, made in 2014 by the way, the special effects are laughable. It's not even a matter of budget as I'm sure any kid with a bit of technology knowledge can do better nowadays. As a horror it was also laughable. I could watch this movie on Halloween in the middle of the woods, alone at night, and still it wouldn't have any effect on me. It's boring, not scary, and the POV is boring as hell to watch. The acting was okay though, but that's about it.

What lured me in to watch "Grace: The Possession" aside from the fact that it is a horror movie, was the movie cover/poster, because it did seem interesting and have some odd, twisted appeal to it. And also the fact that Lin Shaye was in it had some pull as well.

However, it quickly became clear that this movie was going to be one of those movies that make you curl your toes and not sit well with you. Especially so for me. First of all, I am not fond of found footage, which this luckily wasn't. But they had taken it one step beyond that in terms of camera work and made it a point-of-view experience. Are you kidding me? As if the found footage camera work is not questionable, then they had to go beyond that. That approach to the presentation of the movie was just ridiculous and it was almost enough to make me get up and turn off the movie just because of that.

Then lets move on to the storyline. Well, it was as predictable as they come. And it seemed as if the writers had just previously been going through a movie marathon and written the script for "Grace: The Possession" with the impressions of those movies still fresh in mind. Because it lacked originality.

Furthermore, then the movie was frightfully devoid of scares or anything even remotely disturbing or chilling, which is essential for a proper horror movie. "Grace: The Possession" just trotted along on a very generic path on a very generic mission; to be as plain and mundane as possible.

And as a horror movie that doesn't rely on a proper storyline or scares, then at least a proper and impressive special effects repertoire would be to prefer. But no, not here, not with "Grace: The Possession". I will go as far at to stating that it seemed like they actively voted on not to put special effects into the movie. Again, a thing that was lacking from the movie, and dragged it further down.

The acting in the movie was adequate, although it was hardly Lin Shaye's best performance. Then again, she didn't have the lead role, so it wasn't centered on her performance. Alexia Fast, who did have the lead role, was hindered terribly in her performance by the atrocious point-of-view approach the film makers opted for.

If you enjoy a good and proper horror movie, then do yourself a favor and pick another movie, because "Grace: The Possession" is anything but possessed and anything but entertaining.

The eighteen year-old Grace (Alexia Fast) is a Catholic teenager raised by her grandmother Helen (Lin Shaye) since her mother died giving birth to her and her father is unknown. Grace joins the university and has frequent blackouts. The doctor diagnoses her and tells that she might have a mental condition, suggesting her to visit a psychiatrist. However the pious Helen brings her granddaughter home and forces her to frequent the church. Soon Grace discovers hidden secrets from her mother and the priests tell that evil is inside her.

"Grace" is a boring, unoriginal and lame low-budget horror movie of exorcism. The movie is destroyed by the awful and irritating camera work. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "O Mistério de Grace" ("The Mystery of Grace")

Yeah so the movie is in POV and sometimes it seems like it's going to be OKish but then it's not. Especially the end. It's pretty lame. That's pretty much it.

The sub-genre of 'Demonic Possession' has become most frequent in recent horror movie releases & most of them turns out average or below average time-wasters. So I was quite skeptical about it, mostly after watching the trailer. The weird thing about this movie is it isn't a found footage flick but the entire film shot on POV format...from the first-person perspective, mostly of a possessed person. Now, as a POV flick with such a common subject matter, surprisingly it still turned out intelligently well made & very decent overall. The reason it works mostly for keeping all things together pretty simple with good cast & characterization and its decent flow or execution of the story.

Instead of that bad trailer that not only gave too much away but also kind of provide a wrong impression about the movie, the trailer for it required to be short & cleverly done, IMO.