Grace

Holy Mother of...


Grace is an expertly weaved film that incorporates horrific imagery with updates to a familiar setting, a mother raising a monster of an offspring despite all odds (remember Rosemary's Baby?). The film ups the demon child formula by focusing not on the monster but on the monstrosity that the mother puts herself through and eventually commits herself to sustain her child.

The film in itself is a great ride! The horror springs not from the usual Hollywood shock factor but instead on the lingering images of pure horror--the mother squeezing blood from choice cuts bought from the grocery into a milk bottle, slitting up an unexpected victim's wrist to harvest food for her child, and the painful and disgusting image of the grandmother fancying herself lactating (yup, both the scene where she stands in front of a mirror pumping her breasts for milk, and that unforgettable scene of making her husband suckle her). The genius use of horrifying situations and images for the horror of the film mark a refreshing turning back from Hollywood formula of gore and cheap shocks and a gloriuos (this I use because I do have a bias for classic horror) return to what truly was and is horror in essence.

A thorn to my enjoying this film fully is the fact that the monstrosity and the horror that the mother experiences and makes is sold/projected as products of such a great love, a concept that is questionable and problemtic especially for me. I give such weight to this concern because of my personal belief in the pureness of love, hailing not just from my fundamental Christian beliefs but even from Platonic (pre-Christian) notions of love as that which wills/desires for the good of everyone involved. The force then that drives the mother of Grace to will her child to life and to sustain her existence by monstrous means is not one that wills for the good all because of the evil (the non-good) that it allows/creates. This may be a purely theological/ideological concern in the film but one that I feel is central in nuancing it and what it says on what love is.