Grace (2009)

"After losing her unborn child, Madeline Matheson insists on carrying the baby to term. Following the delivery, the child miraculously returns to life with an appetite for human blood. Madeline is faced with a mother's ultimate decision."

I watched this ages ago through Netflix but forgot to post the review up until now. Anyway, "Grace" was more of a drama with a few horror moments than a real horror film and it certainly wasn't in any way scary.

It's no spoiler to tell you that it was about a dead baby which comes back to life and needs to drink blood to live. You'll get that from the DVD sleeve and the trailer.

What you won't expect is how slow and character driven it all is. To say that it's another typical Canadian independent film would just be an insult to Canada and independent films but that's really the only way to describe it. There's a certain subgenre of Canadian movies which all have the same pacing and would drag if it wasn't for the camerawork and story. "Grace" however isn't as good as any of those.

"Grace" is really something that would be better as a 15 minute short as it doesn't really go anywhere. There are no twists or real surprises and it's 100% predictable. The only saving grace (yeah, I realise the pun) is that Jordan Ladd is quite easy on the eye.

I also noticed a really good goof at the 45 min. 49 sec. mark. One of the crew is clearly visible hiding in the doorway while Jordan Ladd is emptying meat into her wheelie bins outside. In fact he's so visible that I thought she was going to go back indoors and have an intruder jump out on her. He didn't and the director's commentary doesn't even mention it either so it just shows how little attention was paid to the editing.

It's still not a totally bad film for one viewing but the more times you watch it, the more you can tear it apart. I watched it twice over and my rating went down from an initial 5 out of 10 to just 2.

I hated Jordan Ladd's weirdo vegan character and all the stuff with breast feeding just made me want to keep saying "Bitty! Bitty Now!" like the David Walliams character in "Little Britain". One scene involving the old mother-in-law really was that sketch too.