Grace

Babies are considered the hope for the future. However, in the realm of horror movie filmmaking, ever since the 1968 masterpiece Rosemary's Baby they are used instead either as a source of fear and even sometimes as an omen of impending apocalypse. While Grace is a film that fits into the tiny maternal-fright genre, it is sadly more of an inferior, schlock fest than the glowing Sundance advance reviews would have you believe. What a pity.

The plot of Grace concerns a mother's relationship with her baby of the title. Grace is the kind of baby that needs special food. No, one does not mean organic. It is rather that of the red kind.

While Rosemary's Baby had its psychological angle to freak out its audience, and It's Alive, though not great by any means, had a fun and campy sense to its material, Grace seems to want to play it completely straight in both tone and plot structure, a bit like The Brood. Problem is, despite this exact plot never being quite done before, the film still feels pretty ordinary.

Grace just never rises above its rote mechanics. It feels at if it tries to coast on its disturbing themes, but despite an eerie music score, the film barely emotes. It chooses to behave in a way any horror genre connoisseur thinks it will, but this also leaves it without depth or originality, and Grace is hardly even fun or thrilling. It may try to go with a slow-buildup, but things do not exactly simmer interestingly, and any real themes on the subject of motherhood and nursing etc. seem petite. Furthermore, the splatter feels routine and much too easy.

Structure wise Grace is also comparable to Lucky McKee's film, May, in terms of slow-crawl buildup to a blood-spilling finish. Yet, director Paul Solet lacks that uncanny wit that McKee displayed so efficiently. Moreover, Solet also shows his narrow-mindedness further when the film ends with one of those annoying tacked on shocks only present to set up a sequel.

This end is also too telling: as this also shows that one can guess each plot turn the movie will take in more non-thrilling and scare-lacking ways. For that reason, Grace should never be considered a standout student in classroom for any filmmaking generation to come.