Grace Under Pressure: Grace and Two Great Loves

Paul Solet‘s Grace is a supernatural horror film that distorts the beauty of motherhood and the God-given miracle of childbirth with a pinch of ungodly, satanic irony. The film pivots on the story of a woman whose solemn vow of veganism is broken to meet her infant daughter’s “special needs.”

The movie begins with Michael (Stephen Park) and his pregnant, vegan wife Madeline Matheson (Jordan Ladd) awaiting the birth of their baby girl. One night, after a tragic car accident, Michael and the unborn baby are killed. In despair and robbed of a child, Madeline carries her stillborn baby to term in her midwife’s independent clinic. The baby, once dead in her mother’s arms, is revived by naught but Madeline’s love. However, things turn for the worse as God’s gift of Grace is revealed to be a creature from below rather than above.

Like many other films in the horror genre, to corrupt an ideology we humans consider “good” as a horror director’s weapon to induce fear among the audience is run-of-the-mill yet somewhat satisfying. It is no wonder then that Solet’s Grace is founded upon warped versions of two types of great love—a mother’s filial love for her son or daughter, which is christened by society as the most powerful and most beautiful emotional force on Earth, and God’s agapic love for all, which is supremely transcendent and unbound by our human laws of logic and ways of understanding. These two types of love, again the two “greatest” forms of love as dictated by both culture and religion, are in essence beautiful and resplendent. They are more so to us, seeing as the Philippine people are a familial and religious people. Turned upside down, the leitmotifs showcasing bastardized storge and corrupted agape in Grace are horrifying through and through.

Like Triangle, the film revolves around a blonde, single (or, in Madeline’s case, turned single) mother whose every action and thought is for the wellbeing and protection of her child, and it matters not how gruesome, morally evil, or unethical to the point of inhumanity and insanity, those actions and thoughts seem to be. This film is a perfect example of how the beauty of a mother’s filial love is turned into the driving force of horror and acts of inhumanity and insanity. However, as a film per se, Grace brings nothing new to the table. In fact, as stated earlier, it is a film that burns slowly and is stretched too thin—two elements in a film that must never be incorporated together. As the longer version of Solet’s short film of the same name, Grace, I believe, should have circumvented the silver screen. Admittedly, however, the elements that comprise Solet’s film are poetic, perhaps the most substantial of all, and necessitate deeper discussion.

Solet’s work is undoubtedly horror, though the monster and antagonist are found not within Madeline’s womb despite the baby Grace requiring lifeblood to live in the stead of her mother’s milk, but Madeline’s heart and mind. Madeline’s actions are indeed monstrous such as making short work of Dr. Richard Sohn (Malcom Stewart) and milking his vessels in order to feed baby Grace, as well as brutalizing her late husband’s own mother, all in the name of keeping her baby. A hint of monstrosity can also be found within Vivian (Gabrielle Rose), Michael’s mother. Abusive, hypercritical of Madeline, and enshrouded, Vivian acted as a secondary antagonist—working behind the scenes, pulling the strings with the intent of stealing a child, in spite of Grace’s demonic nature, from her mother. She does naught but spite Michael’s wife and maltreats her husband Henry (Serge Houde).

As a son, young man, and God willing, a future father, I admit, I have never understood the sacrifices my mother had made, and will never know the inherent feelings a mother has with her newborn. “Can a motherreally be driven to kill for her child?” I ask myself. Unfortunately, I will never know. To corrupt this globally accepted notion that a mother’s inherent love is powerful is both a low blow and an act of genius for Solet as a director of horror, seeing as Grace stirred quite the emotions of disgust and disbelief within the audience, as well as my own heart… and yet, Solet continues to transcend his own standards by perverting a love even greater that a mother’s—God’s.

As a Christian, I see God’s love as something uncontested, even though it is sometimes illogical and all times enigmatic. Truly, the love of God is physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually transcendent. Without Jesus Christ, the embodiment of God’s love, love itself will have been forever unknown to all of creation. The sacrifice of the Son introduces to us the notion of “grace” which is roughly described as a “free and unmerited gift” and “the condition of being favored by the divine.” In Grace, both Madeline and the titular Grace are graced by a foreign power. However, Solet magically manipulates the essence of the word ‘grace’, injecting its meaning with dark exaggeration in that, instead of God favoring them, they are favored by what I believe is the infernal opposite. Perhaps as a mockery of the Son’s resurrection from death, Grace is resurrected into demonization—attracting flies and craving blood and flesh, instead of milk.

The reason why I am quick to conclude that Grace’s origins are demonic in nature and not viral, like Deadgirl or other zombie films, and vampiric, is due to the nature of hellish demonic spirits in ancient lore—they must be invited within a lifeless body only at the behest of those in mourning. Madeline, overcome with grief and loss, acted as the beseecher, summoning the spirit, albeit unknowingly, through her pleas.

Not only did Solet deface the sanctity of God’s and a mother’s love, so too did he mar the very blessedness of life itself. His way is quite commendable—through symbolisms and irony. The film is riddled with countless dialogue and images of milk—the soy milk that Michael was struggling to drink, Henry suckling the breast milk of his wife, Dr. Sohn downing a glass of what seemed to be milk, and of course, the numerous scenes about breastfeeding. Milk, perhaps in all cultures and society, is connected with life. Even before water, it is a mother’s milk that nourishes an infant and gives him or her strength. In the Bible, milk is a symbol of wholesome truth due to its simple yet nutritive qualities. In essence, it brings about life itself.

While blood per se is not milk’s polar opposite, Grace connotes that blood is a symbol for both life and death. Grace, being demonic in nature, is repulsed by milk. Symbolically, a natural, life-giving elixir such as milk being the ironic cause of sickness for a demon is aligned with certain cultural mythologies. Instead, Grace is nourished by blood. Biologically, drinking blood is a sure way to contract various diseases and infection, which brings about death. However, Grace, like a vampire, is instead nourished by lifeblood. Like the literal monster she is, Grace is paradoxically harmed by that which gives life and nutrients to the living, while that which is borderline poisonous for the living to drink is what she longs for.

When we focus on Madeline, however, the notion of blood is seen using a different set of lens. On the other side of the spectrum, blood is linked to life as well. Spiritually, new life was gifted to us by the spilling of the Christ’s blood. We are also compelled to consume the “flesh” and “blood” of God’s son during Communion. While seeing blood as a more transcendent life-giving elixir than milk is in no ways wrong, it does harm the giver. Christ did not bleed instantly,. rather he was subjected to torture most cruel. Christ, the giver of his blood, was lashed in the back with hook-tipped whips, got his head smashed with a barbed crown, was nailed to the cross, and was pierced in the side—and so his blood spilled and washed us clean! Even in Christ’s crucifixion, new life can never be brought upon without the spilling of blood. Suffering and letting blood is essential for life to be accessible. Therefore, after seeing Madeline willingly suffer by the teeth of Grace, we can connect the spiritual symbolisms between Christ and the mother.

It is apt that the two greatest types of love, a mother’s love and God’s love, is encapsulated in the two types of liquid that Grace revolved around—breast milk and blood. For Solet, corrupting these two notions and pouring down a ton of meaning to these two liquids was extremely essential for the film to be considered horror, as horror as a film genre eclipses mere scares. It is bleeding with meaning.

To conclude, while the film was stretched thinly, the sheer amount of meaning in Grace’s symbolisms and scenes were far beyond what was initially expected.

I give the movie a 4/5.