Grace

"Grace" lives up to it's title as a sophisticated, subtle and intelligently twisted exercise which relies on the power of it's central idea completely and runs with it to it's logical conclusion. The filmmakers do everything to allow the theme to operate in stark contrast to reality. The synopsis is clearly stated online so I won't reveal anything else. What I found surprising is the manner in which familiar cultural visuals and themes surrounding babies, birth and motherhood are in several instances smartly dissected and explored. Visuals which have been reduced to kitsch by marketing are stared-at through the film's ghastly filter. When the film works it plays with our sacred assumptions surrounding babies in film - it makes us squirm by employing our stock-responses to images of diapers, baby-baths, mommies breast-feeding, babies crying, a mother straining to give birth, etc., then re-frames those visuals in a delicately shocking manner. It's simple, but thanks to the writing, performances and execution of the film, it comes across as brilliantly diabolical. The relational sub-plots in the story seem to be somewhat grafted-on, as if to address a need to increase character depth, but in these cases the direction is still effective and performances are sound. As a debut feature, there is little here to be impatient with. In a genre which too easily becomes a gore-circus/blast-fright parody of itself, calculated restraint and economy are a very welcome. While the film has flaws, the parts which work do so with such confidence that it argues eloquently for leniency, as well as building an eager anticipation for the director's future work. Highly recommended.

This is one of the most disturbing and demented movies I have ever seen, and that's saying a lot. Jordan Ladd, in her best role to date, imo, plays a pregnant woman, that loses her unborn child in a car accident. BUT, she still wants to carry the dead baby in her womb, until in a gut wrenching scene, she delivers it. It is dead when delivered, but when placed in her arms for a short while, it comes back alive. However, this is the start of a nightmare, that I would not recommend for women period to watch, especially Mothers, because I think it would be almost impossible and unbearable to watch. The baby doesn't have an appetite for milk, it likes blood and only blood, and the Mother (Ladd) is trying to fulfill its needs. Extremely disturbing scenes, and a pretty original horror film, that is not really gory, but pretty bloody. I was actually stunned as I watched it, and to ease the tension a little, it has one of the best killing of a fly scenes I have ever seen in a movie. Great stuff for our demented fans, I highly recommend it to you sickos.

Well if you are looking for a gory movie, you should rather watch "It's Alive" with a similar theme, than this. Don't get me wrong, "Grace" is pretty graphic too, but the other movie will satisfy Splatter fans more. Not that it is better though, it's just more straight forward and doesn't take any prisoners. Coming back to this one, it has one really great idea and can be summarized as a "Rosemaries Baby" meets "Little Shop of Horrors". And while that "sounds" great (and probably was a great read too), it doesn't translate to the screen. Especially considering the two movies that I mentioned above! It's a shame really, this movie being produced by Adam Green (of Hatchet fame), you could and should rightfully expect more. Speaking of Adam Green, he has a cameo in this movie that is beyond weird ... in a bad sense. I'm suspecting his appearance in a store is supposed to be spooky ... it's anything but. Unfortunately it's almost unintentionally funny ... again in a bad way! While you could excuse those few miss happenings, what really drags the movie down (besides the slow pace), is the acting! I'm not saying the actors can't act ... but watching the movie, there is no evidence they actually can act. And it's really pivotal to a small budget movie, that it has performances in it ... It fails on quite a few levels.

Weak plotted, not very good acting, poor written. It wasn't a huge, suicidal, mind breaking disappointment though since I didn't had high expectations about this film. Strangely enough, it is like somebody you don't know at all, gives you the finger while crossing the street... Would you feel offended or indifferent ? I felt a little bit angry and this comment is my finger back because I really can't understand filmmakers compromising without a really strong reason. For me the true message of this movie was something like: "if you don't get into it, means you're not that stupid we really hoped you'd be". This isn't the first and definitively not the last time I felt this way so I am really wondering, why do we have only five fingers per hand... to count the good movies or is it a caprice of nature? :)

I was quite excite to see Grace as I had read all the online buzz which may, in hindsight, done a disservice to the film. While the subject is truly unsettling and squirm inducing, the execution was too conventional in the telling. I was hoping for a deeper and more original film. Last years Let The Right One In certainly set the bar high for horror thrillers and Grace just can't quite reach it. It settles for pandering to it's gimmick instead of a real study of a human in this situation which would have been so much more horrifying and involving. To me the film was content to ride the coattails of its central appalling idea without any exploration of meanings and emotion. It was all too predictable and like watching a short desperate to expand to a feature film. The performances were okay but again nothing you wouldn't expect. There needed to be more on the filmmaker's mind than an exercise in lazy manipulation.

Hey everyone. I generally do not do movie reviews online - I have more things to do with my time, but I felt challenged to do one for 'Grace' as I felt that the films is poorly represented here on IMDb. Some of the more recent horror films that have been coming out of the United States have been absolute garbage, I won't list titles because that's unfair - but I WILL say that the Americans have a very bad habit of remaking already excellent foreign horror films, and making a complete mess of it! This film was original - sure, it was FAR from perfect, but for an American horror film - it was far superior to the massive amount of slop coming out of that country right now. GIVE IT A BREAK!

Screened at the 2009 edition of Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival and based on his critically lauded horror short of the same title, Grace sees Director/Screenwriter Paul Solet expand his nightmarish ode to motherhood to feature length with unfortunate results. Evil babies aren't new to the horror genre, but those quick to assume Grace is yet another knock off of 1974/2008's "It's Alive" would largely be wrong. Eli Roth protégé Solet valiantly tries to steer the story into nuanced territory that combines pathos with dark humor as he spins his yarn about a young couple desperate for a child only to find themselves beset by tragedy and circumstance. Jordan Ladd (the daughter of former Charlie's Angel Cheryl Ladd) and Stephen Park play Madeline and Michael Matheson, a prototypical yuppie pair of granola crunchers who are nominal vegans, drink soy milk, scrupulously compost and generally pay lip service to being environmentally friendly. They're also desperate to start a family but have only been rewarded with broken hearts as two previous attempts ended in miscarriages. Like the old cliché goes, however, three's a charm as Madeline's third pregnancy sails smoothly through the most dangerous gestational periods and things look like their dreams will finally come true. That is until fate throws them another curve-ball forcing Madeline to make the emotionally crippling choice of aborting or bringing to term a stillborn infant. There's some interesting themes being explored here; more than you'd expect from the horror genre, and to his credit, Solet delivers several unexpected non-gratuitous hair-raising jolts along the way – sure signs of an up and coming talent. Unfortunately, he drops the ball by the third act, resorting far too often to the use of gratuitous quantities of blood (although the movie is surprisingly gore free) to the point where Madeline is perpetually doused with the stuff. He also lets things slip by the way he scripted the character of Madeline's intrusive, manipulating and obsessive mother-in-law (Gabrielle Rose), which never seems to work. As a foil, she's needed to push the plot along, but instead brings to the story a disconcerting element akin to stumbling upon twisted Internet *. While the mother-in-law character is the vehicle for the movie's darkest humor, the squeamish ooh's and ahh's mixed in with the laughter during its Fantasia Festival screening confirmed my suspicions that, like myself, much of the audience found this an unnecessary and inappropriate portrayal of a motivationally needed character. While Grace can be lauded for aiming high, it ultimately misses its mark quite low, slipping by film's end to "It's Alive" territory which is all too unfortunate, given the promise it initially held.

This was a pretty bad film. For starters it was shot in HD or with the RED camera, so the picture quality was sh*t! I mean god awful, pixelation everywhere. The story itself was pretty dull and uninteresting. I felt no attachment to the character (the mother) whatsoever. We didn't really get to know her at all. A few more minutes of a 'portrayal into madness' for her in the character development section would have helped greatly. But there would still be issues. For example, the film wasn't horrifying, it was just gory and disgusting. And that does not put horror into a horror film. The director of this film should watch 'rosemary's baby' and learn a thing or two. AVOID!

I'm not a great fan of horrors, and thats not surprising giving the amount of tripe that has been released over the past few years. However my girlfriend does from time to time, insist that we put ourselves though some misery and so Grace found itself on my screen. Now. this film really took the biscuit. it was slow, boring and ridiculous. I found it painful at times. the effects were very poor, I got the impression that the cinematography was carried out by an over-enthusiastic amateur, and as for the plot... well... even the attractive lesbians and lactating grandmother wern't enough to save it. The only thing this movie had going for it was that it finished. How anyone is giving this movie 10/10 I have no idea. You can't even recite the plot to someone without them sniggering.

This movie was they worst movie I have ever seen. First of all the whole concept of the movie was f'd up. Who wakes up one day and goes "You know what would make millions? A mother giving birth to a dead baby and having it come back to life and drink blood." The whole movie consisted of one thing, and that was nipples; bloody, milky, old, young. If I was actually a mother I would have found this movie even more f'd up. The whole thought of a mother being okay with their child drinking blood is just ridiculous and un realistic. The mother should have died in the end which was also un realistic. Also where the f*** was the husband during all of this?! or any other family for that matter. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.