Grace [Blu-ray]

More melodrama than horror
I'm a bit torn on how to review "Grace." As a drama, it does have fairly decent suspense and a slow burn kind of pacing. If you have a short attention span or enjoy gore, this will not be a worthwhile experience. As far as horror goes, it falls short of being frightening, though I do not think that was the plan. The disappointment in the reviews seem to come from expectations rather than the actual movie. At no point was I bored. In fact, it was a pleasant diversion to become immersed in the characters and the mother's slow decent into brutality in order to save her child.

"Grace" is generally presented as a believable story in its context, and is well acted for the most part. A mother desperate for a baby, and destined for a stillborn child, miraculously has the child survive, only to find eventually that blood is the only thing that keeps it alive. The plot is fairly creative and there is tension throughout the movie. Still, if Lifetime had a horror network, this would be...

Suspensful, disgusting, well packed Blu
I do not get to the horror/suspense BDs that often (Last House on the Left & Midnight Meat Train my last couple) but with the amount of material on this I had to give it a sit down. Overall, I was impressed with everything they had to offer on this, and even if you find yourself in that group of people questioning the writing, the Blu has plenty to satiate even the discerning viewer.

The story follows a mom and her stillborn/reanimated baby as they discover what it will take for them to survive. And without delving into being an actual horror/zombie baby film, they manage to show a low key, melodramatic (and as real as possible) take on this family's tale. There is little back story, and nothing given as to how this might have happened or why certain characters are involved to the level they are, so if vague plot lines bother you, skip it. Most of the complaints out there follow the lack of what I described, but in the end, and as sick as the last scene is, this still left...

My Review as on Unrated Magazine.com
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...

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