Raging Grace Review
The horrors of colonialism are terrifyingly literalised in Paris Zarcilla’s debut feature, which fuses gothic horror and biting satire to hold an increasingly urgent mirror to British society, in an exploration of displacement and assimilation. The story follows Joy, an undocumented Filipina cleaner, as she desperately works and saves for a Visa and the guarantee of a better life for herself and her daughter. After living week-to-week, secretly in the homes of her various employers, Joy receives an offer that might just be too good to be true: a gig looking after a large London mansion and its ailing owner.
Reminiscent of Jordan Peele’s Oscar winning 2017 “social thriller” Get Out (with which Zarcilla’s film could have easily shared a title), Raging Grace cleverly upends genre conventions of the British haunted estate, be that Rebecca or The Haunting, to interrogate the country’s colonial past and its lingering effects on both attitudes and policy. Much of this comes from Jon Clarke’s discordant score, which contrasts brilliantly with the films quintessentially British setting.
Max Eigenmann delivers a magnetic performance as a woman torn between terrifying warning signs to get out and a desire to provide a better life for her daughter and finds a genuinely chilling foe in British screen legend David Hayman’s Mr Garrett.
As full to the brim with thought provoking ideas as it is proper scares, Raging Grace is both a wild ride and a searing social commentary that will sit with you long after the credits have rolled.