Friday, May 01, 2009

Movie Review: Grace

I'm not all that into horror films but I did catch the midnight showing of Grace at the IFFBoston. It's not nearly as disgusting as I had heard but rather was a slow thriller with a lot of psychological elements.

Jordan Ladd plays Madeline Matheson a pregnant vegan with a distrust of modern medicine and a disapproving mother-in-law. I won't give too much away but think zombie baby (or maybe it's vampire baby). If you were it's mother, how would you feed it? And you'd probably hide the fact from others and they'd be suspicious.

The story was reasonably quite well thought out and really played on the common fears of new mothers: will the baby be healthy, nursing, exhaustion, intrusive mother-in-laws, etc. The performances were good and there was plenty of creepy isolated atmosphere; and a fair amount of blood (though not gratuitous or exploitative).

I wasn't scared but I was creeped out a few times. The pacing is slow but it's a short film and enough happens. It's writer-director Paul Solet's first feature and it looks like it's going straight to DVD which is a shame, because even to me, it's a better film than that sounds.




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