GRACE: THE POSSESSION (2014)

Studio:       Sony Pictures
Director:    Jeff Chan
Writer:       Jeff Chan, Chris Pare, Peter Huang
Producer:  Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Chris Ferguson
Stars:     Alexia Fast, Lin Shaye, Alan Dale, Alexis Knapp, Brett Dier, Joel David Moore, Clarke Peters

Review Score:

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Summary:

On the eve of her first day at college, a young woman becomes possessed by the same evil entity that consumed her mother.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

While giving birth to her daughter Grace, Mary Hill curses God in the presence of her mother Helen before being confronted by an unseen force of evil and suddenly dying.

18 Years Later – The same demonic presence that consumed her mother enters Grace as she arrives at the dorms of Midleton State University for her first day as a freshman. Grace meets her new roommate Jessica and takes a liking to a boy named Brad. Grace also begins having nightmares and experiencing strange visions when she looks in the mirror.

Brad invites Grace to a house party. After drinking a few shots, Grace goes to the bathroom where she sees another horrific reflection in the mirror. Grace returns to the party to find Brad and Jessica making out. Upset, Grace goes out on the balcony. Jessica confronts Grace and begins talking cruelly about her mother, prompting Grace to push Jessica over the railing and onto the concrete below. Horrified, Jessica tells Brad about Jessica only to discover that Jessica is still alive and their confrontation never happened. Grace passes out.

Grace wakes in a hospital. The doctor asks Grace about her family’s history of mental illness. Grace’s devout grandmother Helen arrives to drive Grace back home, where Helen’s parish priest Father John and his deacon Luke wait to speak with Grace. Angry and disappointed, Helen informs Grace that she has been withdrawn from school and will be forced to live at home.

Grace hears noises coming from behind the locked door to her mother’s old room. Helen sternly reminds Grace that she is to never enter that room.

Grace continues having nightmarish visions and experiences. At church services, fellow parishioners treat Helen coldly. Grace coughs up blood after taking communion. Grace begins losing teeth during her ongoing devilish experiences.

Grace enters her mother’s room and retrieves a memento box. Helen catches her, but Grace locks herself in her own room and takes a handful of pills from Mary’s prescription bottle.

Grace wakes to find Brad sitting on her bed. He morphs into a black-eyed Deacon Luke as Grace starts pleasuring herself. Helen enters unannounced and whips Grace when she catches the girl masturbating.

Grace attends a youth group meeting led by Luke. When another girl disparagingly mentions Grace’s mother, Grace attacks the girl before running into the woods where she has another vision of Mary. Grace returns home to her mother’s room and sees a vision of Mary being raped by Father John.

Grace becomes possessed by the demon and gouges out Helen’s eyes. Grace goes to the church as a supernatural storm gathers in the sky overhead and attempts to seduce Luke. When Luke spurns her advances, Grace attacks Luke. Father John intervenes and knocks Grace unconscious with a chalice.

Grace regains consciousness restrained to a table in the church’s basement. Bishop Michael leads Father John and Luke in an exorcism. Father John stabs Grace before the demon can reveal his secret. After the demon takes over, Grace kills the bishop. Grace follows Father John into the church and drowns him in holy water. Luke confronts the demon and offers to trade his soul for Grace’s. The demon agrees and transfers bodies. Luke later becomes the new parish priest with the dormant demon now inside of him.

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Review:

Grace Hill was born under auspicious circumstances that saw her mother Mary cursing God, being confronted by a demonic presence, and ultimately dying during a bloody childbirth.  Wearing the demure dress of a dairy farmer’s daughter and clutching a bible under one arm, Grace now enters her eighteenth year as a wide-eyed university freshman seeing the world for the first time.  The formerly sheltered young girl experiments with alcohol, crushes on a boy, and goes about the normal life of an average college coed.  Or it would be normal, if not for the demon haunting her dreams and appearing in mirrored reflections.

Grace finds herself gradually consumed by the same evil entity that previously corrupted her mother.  All Grace’s devout Catholic grandma sees is a child in need of strict discipline.  But as devilish visions transform into real-world horrors, everyone soon comes to realize that the only way to separate Grace from her inner demon is a good old-fashioned exorcism.

Sweet, innocent virgin with an “oh gosh!” attitude that rivals Dorothy Gale’s.  God-fearing grandmother with a fire and brimstone mentality to give Carrie White’s mother a run for her money.  Optimistic young clergyman and sullen old priest doing their best impressions of Fathers Karras and Merrin.  Story-wise, everything “Grace: The Possession” has to offer is something all horror fans have seen before.  What no one has seen before however, is this familiar tale of a devil within framed with offbeat and intriguing style.

Like the Humphrey Bogart-starrer “Dark Passage” or the “Maniac” remake with Elijah Wood (review here), “Grace: The Possession” plays from the main character’s point of view.  The entire movie is seen through Grace’s eyes, though technically the audience is seeing things from her demon’s perspective, as a pair of clever bookend sequences depicts moments when the essence transfers.

Oftentimes, lost in the woods or haunted asylum thrillers inspire the out loud question, “why does this have to be found footage?”  Although not technically “found footage,” “Grace” is a clear case where employment of a first-person format elevates a straightforward screenplay into a genuinely different entertainment experience.

There is an inherent Catch-22 when a freshman director makes a debut film.  Sticking to a simple script is in his/her best interest as far as not biting off more than experience can chew goes.  Except then the result is a paint-by-numbers project drawing more yawns than yelps from an audience hungry for fresher thrills.

With so many rote elements and predictable plot beats, there is no doubt at all that “Grace” would have been an outright dud if done traditionally.  Aided by crafty camera design from cinematographer Norm Li, first time feature filmmaker Jeff Chan instead cancels out clichés through inventive presentation.

Li and Chan have a good time experimenting with the format, which translates into fun for the viewer, too.  While trim-worthy fat exists in the form of excessive mirror moping and not-so-hot exposition, “Grace” cashes in on ample opportunities to wring great gags from the POV perspective.  Hair brushes away from the lens as Grace does the same for her face in the mirror.  The camera jiggles moderately while Grace vigorously brushes her teeth.  Quick focus blurs stand in for eye blinks.  The touches are terrific and they make “Grace” a highly engaging watch for the formatting alone.

Also offering a boost to the production is a fine supporting cast of welcome faces.  Clarke Peters of “The Wire” and “Treme” takes a turn as a devil-banishing bishop.  Joel David Moore and TV villain Alan Dale play the pair of priests.  And Lin Shaye channels her best Piper Laurie as Grace’s overbearing grandmother.

Some characterizations are developed oddly, particularly the grandmother vacillating between seemingly in the know about whatever satanic skullduggery consumed her own daughter and willfully oblivious to every troublesome warning sign exhibited by Grace.  These aren’t the most robust performances this talent pool has ever committed to film.  But that has more to do with embodying plot-advancing stereotypes and the likely unusualness of working opposite a camera instead of another actor.

The content may be too routine to impress, but delivery makes up the difference.  While the first-person POV is a gimmick, it is one that makes “Grace: The Possession” unfold in a memorable manner.  This is how creative filmmakers mold meh material into a movie that audiences will talk about after, regardless of how they may have felt about the film itself.

Review Score:  65

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