RAGING GRACE - Mark Reviews Movies

Raging Grace, Brainstorm Media

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 30, 2023

All of the darkness of the past is alive and unwell in Raging Grace, a nimble film that turns the experience of an undocumented immigrant into low-key thriller and a horror story. There's nothing new about that concept as of late, but writer/director Paris Zarcilla's take on this recent trend of storytelling succeeds in two key ways.

First, it makes the lives of Joy (Max Eigenmann), a migrant from the Philippines who works for a cleaning agency, and her young daughter Grace (Jaeden Paige Baodilla) feel grounded in authentic uncertainty. Second, the story gives us, not one, but two villains, who have distinct motives for exploiting Joy and circumstances—although the mindset behind both of those rationales is a shared one. One of the antagonists simply does a better job of trying to disguise an air of supposed superiority, a belittling attitude toward Joy, and the belief that someone like her is only fit to serve a master.

When we first meet Joy and Grace, they're living in a spacious, fancy London house. In reality, they have no home, and Joy is simply keeping a schedule of her clients' vacation and business plans. When those clients out of their houses, the two, who have access and a reason to be there, simply spend their days and nights there.

It's a clever system, although one without any stability and plenty of potential peril. Joy wants to make her and her daughter's residency in the United Kingdom permanent, but at this point and under these circumstances, that's only possible by—let's call them—extralegal means. She has a contact who can get her forged residency documents, but the guy (played by Oliver Wellington) wants £15,000. She's has two-thirds of that, and the forger isn't budging on the price. Plus, he's planning to leave the country for good in a month's time, so Joy has to find the rest of that money—and fast.

All of this feels authentically presented and dire, as does the relationship between the mother, who's clearly desperate to provide Grace with a stable life of some promise, and daughter, who resents how she has to live—moving between houses that aren't her own and sleeping in the cleaning company's storage room when there aren't any vacancies—and takes it out on Joy with little pranks. That Grace is a resentful troublemaker makes a lot of sense for her age and on account of this situation, but the way in which Zarcilla takes the time to establish this shaky mother-daughter dynamic pays off in other ways, too—especially later in the story, when she's promised the kind of solid footing and comfort that Joy wants to but simply cannot provide for Grace.

Before any of that, though, Joy receives a job offer she can't refuse. Katherine (Leanne Best), an attorney, is in need of a live-in housekeeper and has called Joy's agency (named after Rudyard Kipling, whose work is quoted between plot sections and whose—let's call it—controversially imperial attitude defines the prevailing mentality of a couple important characters here). The gig pays well—more than Joy could make in six months—and in cash, and there's even a private room for her to call her own.

The early thriller elements of the story, beyond the inherent uncertainty of Joy and Grace's lives, has the mother attempting to have her daughter live in the remote manor, too, while hiding her from Katherine. The new boss seems kind enough, insisting that Joy refer to her by her first name instead of "Ma'am," although it's telling that Katherine stops correcting Joy on that matter after a bit. Best's performance provides the subtle suggestion that the mistress of the house might start liking the proper address and the power it conveys. Eigenmann's work is solid, too, as Joy balances the need to stay on her boss' good side with the increasing inability to hide that she knows exactly who this woman is, what she's up to, and that her demeaning manner is just that.

As for the plot itself, it involves Katherine's uncle, the estate's current owner Mr. Garrett (David Hayman), who has cancer and is in a coma in his room. Katherine gives him a heavy regimen of medication every day, and in one of her sneaking sessions, Grace discovers that at least one of those pills might not be helping Mr. Garrett.

That part of the story more or less plays out as one might anticipate, especially when it's revealed that Joy was a nurse in her homeland. The specific direction it takes once that mystery has been solved and resolved, though, provides a sinister twist. Some of it has to do with a hidden storage room—where one "relic" among the rest speaks volumes in eternal silence—that Grace finds while exploring the house one night. However, most of it revolves around the unexpected return of a second exploiter, who might seem even more pleasantly polite than Katherine—but only because this character has a much deeper well of prejudice, disdain, and old-fashioned hierarchical thinking from which to draw.

The film has quite a bit to say about the perpetuation and disguise of this way of thinking in the modern era, but Zarcilla smartly makes it all inherent to this story, these characters, and the dynamics of their relationships. Raging Grace is admirable and engaging for that, as well as for its skillful juggling of down-to-earth fears, nightmarish horror, and pointed satire.

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