Grace

I had the unique opportunity to watch this film last night on blu-ray. To say the least it was an extremely unsettling film. First unveiled at Sundance Film Festival in 2008, this film had a ton of buzz surrounding it. During the first screening two men actually fainted from being overcome with anxiety due to the film’s nature and tactics. (Reminds me of The Exorcist days… Hmmm…) So it is a low-budget indie film that makes people faint in the theaters. I was very excited to watch it at the onset after doing a little research.

Watch 'Grace' Trailer Here

The main premise is this: a pregnant mother is involved in a car crash that results in the death of her unborn child. During the crash her husband died, so now the dead child is all she has left. She decides to carry the baby to full-term and then have the child as planned, at home with her midwife standing by. It seems odd, but given the fact that the mother has miscarried twice before, they allow her to wait the 3 weeks. The child is born dead, but then by some miracle of love, it is brought back to life. As the film progresses strange things begin to happen to the child. It’s attacked by flies, develops a taste for flesh, etc. It also begins to love/crave blood, which the mother gathers from raw meat and eventually people too.

The goal of this film is to make the audience as unsettled and disturbed as possible. And it does succeed in its goal. Throughout the film there are random segments of animal torture and slaughtering spliced in with the storyline. It is viewed from a small television in the kitchen, which adds to the realism factor of what we are seeing. And I have no doubt that those images were real. The problem that I have with it that they are so randomly cut-in that it becomes a guessing game as to when we are going to see another animal being tested on in a lab. However, it does add to the consistent disturbing nature of the film. Cheers.

Recently I’ve been fascinated by slaughterhouses and animal cruelty in general. I’m not an advocate of it, but I am intrigued by it. I could possibly be turning into a sociopath or something too. It’s that same mindset that you can’t turn away from a horrific car accident. I guess I like to test my limits. And animal abuse is definitely an area where I find myself cringing. Perhaps I should do a series on films that involve cruelty to animals. Jeez there would be some good candidates. CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, CANNIBAL FEROX, FACES OF DEATH, NEKROMANTIK, ROGER & ME, TEMPLE GRANDIN – to name a few.

The ending, special effects, and the majority of the acting in the film is horrible. But most of all the ending was the biggest letdown. The whole film did a good job of taking itself seriously, but the whole time there were these undertones of dark humor and surrealism to what we were seeing. The end removed all validity this film had in regards to being an indie, psychological head trip horror flim. It moved the film quickly into the mainstream, bad FX, ‘THE RING” and “THE GRUDGE” market. Some people compared this film to ROSEMARY’S BABY, which is on my top ten list of favorite horrors. All I have to say to that is, really? This is nowhere near to RB. It reminded me of IT'S ALIVE in many ways, which I believe IT'S ALIVE is a superior film. But it did accomplish its goal for being quite well. Watch this film with the lights off by yourself.

Rating: 6/10