Grace (2009)

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Remember all those "dead baby" jokes from junior high school? Well, here's the movie. Don't be fooled though. While Grace has a premise which if mishandled, could trigger an unintentional laughfest (see THE DEVIL WITHIN HER [1975], with Joan Collins and Donald Pleasance), it's a serious movie and the filmmakers competently execute the concept.And here it is: when a yuppie named Madeline (Jordan Ladd) miscarries following a car crash, she insists upon carrying the dead child to term anyway. Eventually, while shopping, Madeline's water breaks. Only it's not "water" at all, but a bucket of plasma, all over a white throw rug at Bed Bath And Beyond.Time for delivery. There's a LOT more blood. When amniotic fluid is drained from the baby's mouth, it all comes out greyish black. Not a good sign! Uncanny and unresponsive, Madeline's stillborn baby is obviously dead.Or is it merely UN-dead? It's as if Madeline wills it to life. When her midwife attempts to take the corpse from her, Madeline's baby begins to move. Days later Madeline is back home, a happy, normal mom doting on her now healthy-looking infant.But all is not quite right. Baby's hair starts falling out. Flies develop an affinity for hanging out around the cradle. Baby smells bad! Even a bath can't get rid of the odor of -well of SOME thing. Something awful! Nor, sadly can a bath rid GRACE of the musty scent of the highly derivative. We've seen this all before! (Among others, notably, IT'S ALIVE [1974]; THE BROOD [1979]; in the 1987 Vincent Price horror portmanteau, WHISPER TO A SCREAM, the story called "The Offspring." Then there's the one about a mother-to-be carrying carnivorous fetuses to term: THE UNBORN [1991], not to mention the most well-remembered maternal angst flick since THE BAD SEED [1956], ROSEMARY'S BABY [1968].) GRACE is sensibly assembled however, and to his credit, writer/director Paul Solet manages to get a novel spin on the well-worn convention. Derivative though it may be, GRACE doesn't feel so familiar that we can't enjoy the horror.Intriguingly, with utter denial of the fact of a dead baby as the fulcrum of its turmoil, while featuring themes of disillusionment and family dysfunctionality, GRACE is superficially reminiscent of Sam Shepard's shocking, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, BURIED CHILD. In that allegorical work, conflict stems from a simultaneous demand and resistance to reveal an appalling, life altering truth.In GRACE, which is merely a straight-forward fright-flick, the real horror arises not so much from the fact that Madeline's child is a monster, but from Madeline's compelling need, yet complete refusal, to acknowledge that fact and to be repelled by it. Madeline loses herself in a misguided, hellbound obsession to be a normal mother.Even before the miscarriage, Madeline's soul seems nearly as charred as those of the family in BURIED CHILD. A closet lesbian in a loveless marriage, at extreme odds with her emotionally troubled, dominating in-laws, and with little use for her emasculated husband other than as a sperm donor, the unimpassioned, intellectually aimless Madeline is supremely empty inside. To substitute purpose for her spiritual destitution, Madeline fanatically clings to so rigorous a "green" lifestyle that she feeds her cat soy milk. The irony is that despite her strict vegan diet, Madeline's baby demands only blood for sustenance, and as its devoted nurturer, Madeline is driven to supply it.But how?

The only people giving this amateur pile of crap more than a 3 or 4 are people who are obsessed with the taboo of the taboo, and that still only applies if you buy into vaguely feminist cinema, or care to explore something as droll as motherhood. Here's a message that should be sent out to everyone who gave this film an 8: motherhood happens all the time, and it's been done. Done to death. And this is a painful example of a director who knew he could get a sympathy DVD sale from adventurous housewives. The constant vegan/matriarchal imagery was painful to watch and couldn't get any less subtle. This movie will not make you think. This movie won't make an emotionally healthy person ponder motherhood, morality, or science. All it will make you do is wish you watched 11/11/11, and that movie is pure garbage, but at least it was funny.

Madeline and Michael Matheson (Ladd & Park) are thrilled about their upcoming baby. Michael and his parents are not happy with Madeline's decision to go to a midwife named Patricia (Ferris) who is later revealed to be an ex-lover of Madeline's. An unexpected car accident kills Michael and supposedly kills the baby inside of Madeline. She still gives birth with Patricia and everyone is devastated at the dead baby, until Grace seems to will the baby back to life. Madeline goes into seclusion with her baby who seems to be attracting flies and is doing a nasty number on mommy's breast while breast feeding. This is not a normal baby and Madeline catches on to its blood lust. At first she buy's meat from the store and pours animal blood in the bottle and eventually she must look to humans for fresh blood. This twisted story by Writer/Director Paul Solet is clever in how it unfolds on screen. The couple is very normal and once the dead baby is brought to life things go from bad to worse. Solet doesn't spell every detail out either like how is the baby alive? Or is it really alive, or is she alive only Madeline's mind? The script wisely lets the audience draw their own conclusions which keep things fresh throughout. Nothing jumps out at you, there aren't jump scares or any real suspense, this films terror lies in its subject matter and how it goes from bad to worse. The cast is good with Jordan Ladd doing a nice job in the lead and Samantha Ferris is very believable as the jilted lesbian lover.

This is a difficult movie to review because it's such a mixed bag of really good and really bad. First and foremost, the movie really disturbed me and that takes so serious doing so big thumbs up for that. The movie is also very well shot.My problems are with the abysmal writing. The movie never had a clear direction. Some really interesting plot lines never went anywhere and others were never explained. Here are just some of the problems with this movie (spoilers ahead): 1. Is the baby dead or alive? The movie indicates its normal when it is born, but then it appears to be decomposing (flies like it, temperature is too cold, skin dissolving in bath water). If it is dead, why isn't it really dead (i.e, room temperature as opposed to 93.3 degrees). Also, as a parent, you would notice when your child is that cold. It would be obvious to the touch. This mother blamed it on a broken thermometer.2. In addition to never knowing what the baby is, we never know why it is the way it is. The movie hints at lots of things like the mother's meatless prenatal diet, the animal violence she watches on TV, or the trauma prior to birth, but we never get any type of answer.3. We see way too little of the baby. I get that it's a tough subject to shoot, especially with this plot, but Christ, that's what the movie is about. I want to see this thing.4. The best parts of this movie are the scenes with the baby. As a parent with two small children I found this horrifying. But the movie abandons the baby as it spends the last 30 minutes in this short film in its crib. There were plenty of scenes where it easily could have done something cool that fit with the plot. For example, at the end where the grandmother is dying with a hemorrhaging aorta while holding the baby, how about having the baby drink the blood instead of just sitting there.5. The lack of baby actually doing crazy stuff in this movie made me suspect that the twist at the end was that the baby was completely normal and it was the mother who was trying to get the kid to drink blood. The plot was so unclear that I found myself constantly wondering such things.6. The characters behave in ways that is just out of character. Notably, the mother is an animal loving vegan, but she watches some channel on TV that is constantly showing real life killings of animals. She explains that its like watching a horror movie for vegans, but its not believable. Also, the baby is several weeks old before the obsessed grandmother goes over for a visit. I know grandmothers (who aren't obsessed) and they don't wait! 7. I never understood the relationship between the mother and the mid-wife. The movie seemed to assume we had watched a prequel with these two.8. Why was Patricia buying an RV? It fit at the end, but she had no way of knowing she'd be running off with a kidnapped monster child.9. The ending is just silly. Was it trying to be funny at the end? If it was, it failed and it didn't fit with the rest of the movie. And it was completely unrealistic. A baby drinks a lot. A human body can't even reproduce a cup of blood a day. And if you were going to give a baby your own blood, why not just put in an IV and bottle feed it. Why would you let it bite the end of your breast? Despite the many and gaping plot holes/deficiencies, I do have to recommend this movie because it really scared me.