Raging Grace

Peel back the cliches and there’s something interesting here: a gnawing sense of injustice and biting social commentary.

Zarcilla strains so hard to match the politics of the premise with the parameters of horror that he ends up diluting both — imagine Roma meets Poltergeist, or The Maid meets Insidious.

Zarcilla may have more ideas than this film can easily accommodate, or the viewer easily swallow, but he is a distinctly stylish and confident director to keep an eye on.

There is ingenuity here, and good acting, but the film for me feels flawed by its strained melodrama, an absence of scares and by a very odd scene of almost unreal, farcical absurdity.

The final act doesn’t quite hold together, but the overall intent is more than effective.

In his feature debut, writer and director Paris Zarcilla proves he is a master storyteller.

The denouement spills over into hoary melodrama, but this is a distinctive slice of gothic realism whose social critique is unsettlingly sharp.

"Raging Grace is a sociopolitical thriller that might wander too far into the absurd but does so with immense confidence and style."

Raging Grace is effectively a solid and chilling debut from Zarcilla.

combines sharp social critique with supernatural sentiment, making Raging Grace queasy, creepy and utterly brilliant.