Grace – Paul Solet (2009)

Dear God, thank you for treating us to movies every once in a while that are just wrong in every way.“Grace” is Paul Solet’s feature film debut. Solet, isn’t someone you’ve heard of iunless you’re just the most obsessive horror movie fan in the universe, or maybe one of his friends or something.
He won “Fangoria Magazine’s” Best Short Horror Film of the Year Award in 2005 for his film, “Means to an End.”

It was amusing, but nothing earth-shattering. There was nothing in the film that would indicate he would go on to make such a wonderfully obscene and original first feature.

In a nutshell, “Grace” is about a cannibal baby.That’s right, this movie is about a baby that drinks blood. And of course, animal blood just won’t do. That would just turn into a short, boring movie really fast.

But “Grace” is wonderful and it is revolting. You have not seen breast feeding like this before.

But that’s not even the best part. Neither the blood-sucking baby nor the mother who supplies the infant with God’s yummy, red innards-nectar is the creepiest character in the movie.

The baby has a grandma who’s almost demonically insane. I mean, she is just a treat to watch. When she finds out she’s going to be a grandmother, she does some research and discovers that women can lactate past menopause if their nipples get sufficient stimulation.

Of course, the crazy grandma gets excited about this and starts letting grandpa into her sweater full of goodies for the first time in God knows how long, just in the hopes of being able to breastfeed her grand-baby. Which of course, is more unsettling than the baby who drinks blood.

Now that’s a level of insanity you have to work at. God doesn’t just give that kind of crazy away.

So what we have here is Solet weaving together a tapestry of people behaving in just the most unimaginable ways.


First, we have the baby who has to have breast blood instead of breast milk.

Then there’s the mother.

Let’s just say if you really like a sick thrill, like I do, it’s better for you go ahead and watch “Grace” then to have me explain how it all works here.

If you are the kind of person who’s just dying to have me describe how the mother gets Grace her blood, you’re probably the kind of person who's out there killing small animals, not the kind sitting at a computer, reading movie reviews.

Then you have the just unbelievably insane grandmother who’s determined to make herself start lactating again so she can feed her grand-baby, but oh my God, she has no idea what she’s getting into.

Add it all up and Solet serves up a recipe for a truly delightful 84-minute ick-fest.

If you like gross and you like “what is wrong with you lady” filmmaking, you really aren’t going to do a whole lot better than “Grace.”

Solet doesn’t come near the level of Cronenberg when it comes to examining just what our relationships to these bizarre things we call bodies are. But that is a high watermark.

Cronenberg will always be the master of this kind of film, but “Grace” is more than worth a look, nevertheless.