Grace (2009)

One of the movies I knew the least about going into this year’s Frightfest was first time director, Paul Solet’s GRACE. The fact that Adam Green who directed SPIRAL, which is an RCR favourite, produced it and gave Solet a video introduction before hand made me sit up and take interest. GRACE was originally intended to be a feature film but not being able to get the funds together Solet made it into a short film with an entirely different cast and managed to get noticed at a film festival by Green. He had taken one of the props from the movie along which made Green take notice. Those of you who see the movie will realize the prop I was talking about.

Jordan Ladd plays Madeline Matheson who at eight months pregnant gets into a car crash with her husband and loses her unborn baby. Heartbroken she decides that she wants to go to term with her unborn baby Grace and opts to do this with a midwife instead of going to hospital. M iraculously Grace returns to life a few moments after she is born. Unwilling to listen to her bossy mother-in-law she opts not to go to hospital for blood tests to see how this resurrection occurred. When Madeline takes Grace Home it becomes clear that all is not quite what it seems but being her miracle child she chooses to ignore it. All too quickly Grace develops a taste for blood and when processed meat from a shop leaves her uninterested Madeline must seek alternatives elsewhere.

The only thing I knew about GRACE before going to see it was that when it was showed at the Sundance Film Festival Stateside two men had to be taken out by paramedics after they fainted. At FrightFest there were a few walk outs but I think these were for an entirely different reason. With the vast majority of us being horror fans gore and scares only serve to make us enjoy a movie more. If I had to guess I ‘d say they walked out of the movie for the same reason that kept me from giving this one a higher rating - they were simply bored. The movie drags far too much. If perhaps it was a shorter movie then it may have worked better but it seemed to suffer from being far too drawn out. It’s not all bad though; my respect goes to the director for trying to be original and doing something slightly different. It would have been easy to jump on board and go out and make a remake or copy a tried and tested formula but Solet tried to play on a generally unused subject in horror movies – Childbirth.

Another positive from the movie was that it managed to make me cringe on quite a few occasions. Not from gore or scares by but instead from the whole subject of childbirth. As a guy with no kids I really do not have much knowledge of the subject, nor do I have any desire to find out more anytime soon.

It’s quite difficult to compare GRACE to any other movie and I suppose that’s no bad thing so I’ll just say this – Check this one out if you’re looking for something slightly different from the norm. It’s just a little bit too slow for me.

Date: 22/02/2009
Rating: 2.5/5
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