Grace

Though it boasts as irresistible and compelling a premise as one could imagine, Grace suffers from an overtly clinical, egregiously weird approach that ultimately negates its positive attributes – as writer/director Paul Solet’s decision to emphasize style over substance essentially strips the proceedings of its authenticity (ie it’s as though Solet has taken a horror-movie nightmare sequence and expanded it to feature length). The storyline follows Jordan Ladd’s Madeline Matheson as she inexplicably chooses to carry her unborn child to term even though it died during a brutal car crash, with the remainder of the proceedings primarily detailing Madeline’s efforts at caring for the child after it emerges from her womb very much alive. The seemingly can’t-miss nature of the movie’s set-up ensures that the deliberately paced opening half hour is relatively easy to stomach, as Solet admittedly does a nice job of establishing the off-kilter universe within which the various characters reside. And although Ladd’s superb performance initially proves instrumental in grounding the proceedings, it becomes increasingly difficult to overlook the film’s almost pervasive lack of believable/plausible attributes – with the sporadic inclusion of eye-rollingly quirky elements only exacerbating this feeling (eg Madeline’s mother-in-law, in anticipation of taking custody of the child, attempts to replenish her supply of milk by forcing her husband to nuzzle her breast). There subsequently reaches a point at which one can’t help but throw one’s arms up in frustration, as the film inevitably abandons any pretense of attempting to frighten the viewer and essentially succumbs to its aggressively surreal atmosphere (ie if David Lynch and David Cronenberg got together to make a film, it might just resemble Grace – which, depending on one’s feelings towards the two filmmakers’ distinctive sensibilities, ensures that the movie ultimately comes off as a love-it-or-hate-it proposition).

** out of ****