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 It really is a shame that horror films have become so cliché--wait, allow me to rephrase--it’s a shame that Hollywood horror films have become so predictable and cliché that all one needs to do to rise to the top of the lists of major critics and festivals is to have a novel idea. We saw it last year with the horribly confused Teeth, and here it is again in Paul Solet‘s feature-length directorial and writing debut, Grace. Here there be spoilers, so bail now if this is on your must-see list--though I’ll save you some time and money if you give me a chance.
Grace is about a zombie baby. Let me explain.
Madeline (Cabin Fever’s Jordan Ladd) and Michael Matheson (Stephen Park) have been trying to have a baby for years and sadly, they’ve had terrible luck, resulting in multiple miscarriages. At their wits end, they decide to pursue nontraditional medicine in the hopes that their current pregnancy will make it all the way.
Madeline reconnects with an old college friend, Patricia Lang (Samantha Ferris), who is a practicing midwife to deliver their baby. The film stumbles almost immediately out of the gate when we get into the textbook “Dharma & Greg” struggles of her husband and in-laws being dubious about her pursuing nontraditional, New Age medical support. This results not just in clunky dialogue, but a mother-in-law character (played by Gabrielle Rose) who begins obnoxious and turns wholly unrealistic by the end of the story.
Six weeks short of her delivery, Madeline and Michael get into a devastating car accident (maybe the most interesting part of the film), killing the baby still within her. Even though the baby is dead (along with its father), Madeline decides to take the baby full term and deliver it stillborn.
 She does so, and while holding the baby carcass in her arms at the midwifery, through some unexplained mystery (a miracle, I believe, is proclaimed at one point), the baby returns from the dead.
Madeline then becomes a weirdo recluse with her baby, not answering phone calls from the in-laws and doting over her newborn. Doesn’t she have a job? She discovers very quickly that flies seem to like her baby a lot and her baby has quite the chomp for a newborn, suckling blood from her breasts instead of milk. She refuses to take the baby to a proper hospital and allows this situation to get out of control.
The biggest issue I have with this film is that it doesn’t really go anywhere from this point, and this is about a half-hour into the film. The following hour is basically about how the baby is eating more of Madeline’s boob, the mother-in-law is getting more crazy and how her midwife is concerned, yet avoiding her friend/patient for some unexplained reason (though there is some hinting that the two of them had a lesbian relationship back in college, though it’s never explained or gone into).
Madeline tries a workaround for her baby’s feeding problem, but like the rest of the film, it doesn’t go nearly as far as it could (and should) had Solet been a little more imaginative and committed.
The writing, mostly, is fairly unobtrusive, but there are some ridiculous moments that stand out, like when the doctor sent by her mother-in-law comes to check on her (to find her negligent of the baby so the in-laws could get custody), stands outside her unanswered front door and says on the phone that if Madeline doesn’t answer the door, he can’t find her negligent. Grace is rife with conveniently scripted moments such as this that approach insulting to the average viewer’s intelligence.
 Then there’s the much-lauded subtext of the film, that it’s about what great lengths mothers will go to for their children. It’s true, we have two mothers in the film, one of which is letting her infant literally suck her dry and the other who is going through great lengths (and, it can be argued, levels of insanity) to retrieve her grandchild, but to call it subtle in any way would be like calling filet mignon a vegetarian feast. Viewers are so constantly hit over the head with Solet’s underlying themes that it quickly becomes tawdry and predictable.
However, there is what seems to be another subtext, which is a not-so-subtle rant against New Age culture and so-called “alternative” lifestyles. It’s hard to tell if it’s intentional, but if it’s not, it’s certainly pervasive and gives the film a distinct conservative slant.
Ultimately, Grace is a film with a novel idea at its heart, but Solet doesn’t take it far enough to be truly terrifying or disturbing, or at the very least, entertaining. Imagination is sorely missing from the current crop of horror films gracing our cineplexes, and while the unique concept of Grace is a delight, its execution is not.
Grace is now playing at Laemmle Sunset 5.
For more information, visit the film’s official Web site.
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