Raging Grace (now streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime) won the grand jury award at SXSW in 2023, and itâs easy to see why. The debut feature from director Paris Zarcilla is a provocative and socially conscious thriller with a horror fringe that would make Hitchcock himself raise a proud eyebrow. Itâs the story of an undocumented Filipino immigrant whoâs so desperately trying to keep her young daughter safe and fed, she doesnât see that a too-good-to-be-true job opportunity is in fact a massive can of worms, and, as these things inevitably work, thereâs no putting the lid back on once theyâre all wriggling free all willy-nilly and such.
RAGING GRACE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: We open with a JUMP SCARE, hello there! Joy (Max Eigenmann) is asleep under a pile of blankets and pillows on a couch, and she has a tendency to awake rather suddenly. Bad dreams. Likely a side effect of the anxiety. She and her eight-or-10-ish-year-old daughter Grace (Jaeden Paige Boadilla) are homeless. Joyâs a housecleaner who quietly squats in her employersâ swanky homes when theyâre away. She meets with a broker, likely shady, whoâs trying to secure her a visa, but sheâs £5k short of the £15k she needs. âWhy do you people always do this?â the broker asks, and itâs not the last time weâll hear that you people, and considering Joy is an undocumented not-White person, itâs probably, conservative estimate, about the zillionth time sheâs heard it.
Adding to Joyâs stress: Grace is rebellious, and you wonder if her mean little pranks â sneaking gravy into the teapot, for instance â are an extension of her frustration with her mother, or a little bit of eat-the-rich mischief for when the moneyed (and almost certainly White) folk come home and sit down for a cuppa and some casual racism. Both could be true, of course. From the looks of it, their chaotic, anti-sedentary lifestyle means Grace isnât going to school or interacting with peers or doing much normal-kid stuff. Itâs just survival survival survival, so itâs no surprise that sheâs acting out and making her motherâs life more difficult than it already is.
You canât help but feel for the poor kid, and thatâs before Joy quite literally crams Grace into a suitcase. Having a kid could be a liability when you have to take them to work with you, and Joy doesnât want to risk the plum gig she just landed. She hauls the suitcase up to a massive country manor, and one look at the place has us invoking the OG Amityville-slash-Jordan Peele exhortation: get⦠out! Please note the word choice: itâs no ordinary olâ mansion, but a gothic thing with more vibes than rooms, and it has a whole lotta fâing rooms. Hence, manor.
So hereâs the sitch. A haughty you-know-what, Katherine (Leanne Best), hires Grace to clean up the place, which is full of creepy portraits and antique furniture, all draped with dusty plastic and sheets. Grace will also help care for Katherineâs ancient, ailing uncle, Mr. Garrett (David Hayman), whoâs essentially comatose in bed. Her first impulse upon seeing him is to clasp her hands and pray for him â and then his barely-awake hand reaches out and GRABS her. The place is so huge, Joy gets her own bedroom, and itâd be easy for Grace to remain undetected if sheâd just stay hidden inside the wardrobe, which she never, ever does of course. (You donât know whether to be amused or empathize with Joyâs anxious frustration.) Katherine has to go away for a few days, so Joy gets a break from the exhausting condescension, and Grace can wander â wander into Mr. Garrettâs room and discover that his niece has been drugging him, which sure looks like some damn foul play, doesnât it? This is when we learn that Joy used to be a nurse, and took an oath, and canât just let this situation stay asleep in its bed with a feeding tube up its nose.Â
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: With Grace scampering around and hiding in the mansion while we grit our teeth (and laugh, more than just a little) hoping Katherine doesnât notice, and the upstairs-downstairs kind of dynamic, you canât help but think about Bong Joon-Hoâs Parasite. And it explores some similar class-divide stuff that Saltburn was too unfocused and self-interested to address with any clarity.
Performance Worth Watching: Eigenmann is a rock-solid protagonist, and makes it impossible not to feel Joyâs guts get tied in a knot from all the stress. Itâs also sort of a spoiler to say that Hayman gives a performance thatâs more than just being an almost-dead-body, but we have to note how he steals a few scenes as the story unravels.
Memorable Dialogue: One mispronounced word, culled from a moronic sentence dribbling out the mouth of one of Joyâs idiot rich employers: âFilipeenees.â
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Thereâs no denying Zarcillaâs ambition: Raging Grace finds significant dramatic traction in both the personal and the political, and the big, messy, complicated area where the two overlap in their Venn diagram. Thereâs a moment where Joy is so on edge that we hear her stomach gurgling, then gurgling again, then she dashes to the bathroom, and itâs a throwaway moment with no greater meaning than to make her highly relatable to those of us whoâve experience stress of such an intensity that it manifests in physical discomfort. Which is to say, all of us. And I donât mean to be overly glib, or to gloss over the filmâs critical depiction of privilege or racial disparity, but having an upset gut during a moment of high anxiety is one of the things that makes us human. Itâs loose poop as the great uniter.
I apologize for the blunt imagery. But this is relevant in a story where our protagonist is treated as a lesser-than, especially by Katherine, whoâs so insistent that Joy call her Katherine instead of maâam, that the formality of such forced informality is a reminder of everyoneâs place around here, and that everyone should stay in that place, especially if one is the controller and one is the controllee. Such details reveal that Zarcilla has intention beyond paying lip service to the struggles of immigrants, or trying to exploit the cliches of horror-thrillers that flirt with the supernatural; writing Joy as a woman of significant faith not only opens the door to a logical indulgence of ghostly imagery, but also shows a wily confluence of character depth, cultural specificity and classic Hitchcockian thriller tropes.
This isnât to say Raging Grace is airtight â Zarcillaâs use of jump scares, itâs-just-a-dream-(or-is-it?) sequences and monologuing villains verge ever-so-slightly on hackiness. But his tone is never dead-serious; heâs playful, inferring that we can be amused and entertained â especially by the wily puckishness of young Boadillaâs performance â as we absorb insights about the immigrant experience. The film is shrewdly directed, intelligent and entertaining, from a director who knows how to play his audienceâs nerves like a piano, and its funny bone like an idiophone.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Raging Grace is a gem. More from Zarcilla, please.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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