That was an excellent one.

Instant Favorite.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Blistering performances.

Oh no, not another evil child horror film I hear you cry! Yet there's something very fresh about Paul Solet's movie, it's deeply unsettling but emotionally complex, even gnawing away at our inner built capacities for empathy and sympathy.Jordan Ladd plays the mother of the piece, hit with personal tragedy time and time again, her will is tested to the limit when a car crash strips her of her husband and renders the baby she is carrying as being a sure case of still born. But she's determined to carry it to term, and when she literally wills the dead child alive, it responds in kind and becomes Grace, the miracle baby…What follows is the disintegration of Ladd's character and of the key characters around her. Meditations on grief are heavy but richly so, as is the nods to post-natal depression. The horror elements are strong, as baby Grace shows a thirst for something other than milk, and the slow-burn approach favoured by Solet pays off with a final quarter of heartbreaking devilment. Cast are dandy, especially a very committed Ladd, while other tech credits keep the film very much in the upper echelons of this sub-genre of horror. 8.5/10

Remember all those "dead baby" jokes from junior high school? Well, here's the movie. Don't be fooled though. While Grace has a premise which if mishandled, could trigger an unintentional laughfest (see THE DEVIL WITHIN HER [1975], with Joan Collins and Donald Pleasance), it's a serious movie and the filmmakers competently execute the concept.And here it is: when a yuppie named Madeline (Jordan Ladd) miscarries following a car crash, she insists upon carrying the dead child to term anyway. Eventually, while shopping, Madeline's water breaks. Only it's not "water" at all, but a bucket of plasma, all over a white throw rug at Bed Bath And Beyond.Time for delivery. There's a LOT more blood. When amniotic fluid is drained from the baby's mouth, it all comes out greyish black. Not a good sign! Uncanny and unresponsive, Madeline's stillborn baby is obviously dead.Or is it merely UN-dead? It's as if Madeline wills it to life. When her midwife attempts to take the corpse from her, Madeline's baby begins to move. Days later Madeline is back home, a happy, normal mom doting on her now healthy-looking infant.But all is not quite right. Baby's hair starts falling out. Flies develop an affinity for hanging out around the cradle. Baby smells bad! Even a bath can't get rid of the odor of -well of SOME thing. Something awful! Nor, sadly can a bath rid GRACE of the musty scent of the highly derivative. We've seen this all before! (Among others, notably, IT'S ALIVE [1974]; THE BROOD [1979]; in the 1987 Vincent Price horror portmanteau, WHISPER TO A SCREAM, the story called "The Offspring." Then there's the one about a mother-to-be carrying carnivorous fetuses to term: THE UNBORN [1991], not to mention the most well-remembered maternal angst flick since THE BAD SEED [1956], ROSEMARY'S BABY [1968].) GRACE is sensibly assembled however, and to his credit, writer/director Paul Solet manages to get a novel spin on the well-worn convention. Derivative though it may be, GRACE doesn't feel so familiar that we can't enjoy the horror.Intriguingly, with utter denial of the fact of a dead baby as the fulcrum of its turmoil, while featuring themes of disillusionment and family dysfunctionality, GRACE is superficially reminiscent of Sam Shepard's shocking, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, BURIED CHILD. In that allegorical work, conflict stems from a simultaneous demand and resistance to reveal an appalling, life altering truth.In GRACE, which is merely a straight-forward fright-flick, the real horror arises not so much from the fact that Madeline's child is a monster, but from Madeline's compelling need, yet complete refusal, to acknowledge that fact and to be repelled by it. Madeline loses herself in a misguided, hellbound obsession to be a normal mother.Even before the miscarriage, Madeline's soul seems nearly as charred as those of the family in BURIED CHILD. A closet lesbian in a loveless marriage, at extreme odds with her emotionally troubled, dominating in-laws, and with little use for her emasculated husband other than as a sperm donor, the unimpassioned, intellectually aimless Madeline is supremely empty inside. To substitute purpose for her spiritual destitution, Madeline fanatically clings to so rigorous a "green" lifestyle that she feeds her cat soy milk. The irony is that despite her strict vegan diet, Madeline's baby demands only blood for sustenance, and as its devoted nurturer, Madeline is driven to supply it.But how?

Grace is a dark tale of a pregnant woman who is involved in a car accident, which kills her husband and unborn child. Madeline, who has struggled for years to have a kid, decides to carry to term. A stillborn is the result, but little Grace, somehow, comes to life. The little one smells strange and has a taste for blood. Previous to the accident, Madeline fights with her mother in law, Vivian, over her being a vegetarian and also her belief in midwifery and breast feeding. This is sort of a feminist horror film. Grace attracts flies and clumps of hair fall out when it is brushed. When mommy attempts to breast feed the tot, it bites her and drinks her blood; the little devil; or vampire. The final portion of Grace is very bloody and violent, but the acting is superb and if you are a fan of Rosemary's Baby or The Omen, this is your cup of tea.

This is a difficult movie to review because it's such a mixed bag of really good and really bad. First and foremost, the movie really disturbed me and that takes so serious doing so big thumbs up for that. The movie is also very well shot.My problems are with the abysmal writing. The movie never had a clear direction. Some really interesting plot lines never went anywhere and others were never explained. Here are just some of the problems with this movie (spoilers ahead): 1. Is the baby dead or alive? The movie indicates its normal when it is born, but then it appears to be decomposing (flies like it, temperature is too cold, skin dissolving in bath water). If it is dead, why isn't it really dead (i.e, room temperature as opposed to 93.3 degrees). Also, as a parent, you would notice when your child is that cold. It would be obvious to the touch. This mother blamed it on a broken thermometer.2. In addition to never knowing what the baby is, we never know why it is the way it is. The movie hints at lots of things like the mother's meatless prenatal diet, the animal violence she watches on TV, or the trauma prior to birth, but we never get any type of answer.3. We see way too little of the baby. I get that it's a tough subject to shoot, especially with this plot, but Christ, that's what the movie is about. I want to see this thing.4. The best parts of this movie are the scenes with the baby. As a parent with two small children I found this horrifying. But the movie abandons the baby as it spends the last 30 minutes in this short film in its crib. There were plenty of scenes where it easily could have done something cool that fit with the plot. For example, at the end where the grandmother is dying with a hemorrhaging aorta while holding the baby, how about having the baby drink the blood instead of just sitting there.5. The lack of baby actually doing crazy stuff in this movie made me suspect that the twist at the end was that the baby was completely normal and it was the mother who was trying to get the kid to drink blood. The plot was so unclear that I found myself constantly wondering such things.6. The characters behave in ways that is just out of character. Notably, the mother is an animal loving vegan, but she watches some channel on TV that is constantly showing real life killings of animals. She explains that its like watching a horror movie for vegans, but its not believable. Also, the baby is several weeks old before the obsessed grandmother goes over for a visit. I know grandmothers (who aren't obsessed) and they don't wait! 7. I never understood the relationship between the mother and the mid-wife. The movie seemed to assume we had watched a prequel with these two.8. Why was Patricia buying an RV? It fit at the end, but she had no way of knowing she'd be running off with a kidnapped monster child.9. The ending is just silly. Was it trying to be funny at the end? If it was, it failed and it didn't fit with the rest of the movie. And it was completely unrealistic. A baby drinks a lot. A human body can't even reproduce a cup of blood a day. And if you were going to give a baby your own blood, why not just put in an IV and bottle feed it. Why would you let it bite the end of your breast? Despite the many and gaping plot holes/deficiencies, I do have to recommend this movie because it really scared me.