Raging Grace is an unusual contemporary social-comment-psychological-horror feature debut by British/Filipino Paris Zarcilla, an exciting new filmmaking voice.
Home & Colonial
by Alexa DalbyRaging Grace
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
Joy (Max Eigenmann), an undocumented Filipina cleaner and single mother moving from house to house in London, concealing the existence of her impetuous, acrobatic 12-year-old daughter Grace (Jaeden Paige Boadilla), is saving up her meagre cash payments to buy a visa and a more stable home for them both. Meanwhile they live illicitly in rich clients’ houses while they are away, having no home of their own to go to. In a way, they are trying to be invisible, non-people. But home should be more than just be a place of survival, says the film.
Stuck in a roundabout of precarious employment, deportation fears and casual, constant put-downs by her employers, Joy cannot afford to stand still. A dream job living in a mansion and looking after its bed-bound owner (David Hayman) turns out to be too good to be true, when Joy starts suspecting the owner is being slowly poisoned, but she can’t afford to leave a job she needs just to survive and whose generous wage promises to solve her money worries. Anyone else would perhaps have left immediately, but Joy has no choice but to stay.
Raging Grace elegantly balances gothic horror and social drama, producing a film that provokes as much as it spooks. Writer-director Paris Zarcilla shrewdly employs and subverts scary-movie tropes – such as jump scares, hands suddenly reaching out and grabbing, hiding in inaccessible places – while teasingly suggesting supernatural influences. The film keeps you guessing as it unexpectedly switches your perceptions and sympathy.
Although horror is not my genre, I really enjoyed this original, mould-breaking film: it seems to me that Raging Grace has a different, clean, non-traditional look, thanks to cinematographer Joel Honeywell. The soundtrack composed by Jon Clarke uses traditional instruments to very scary effect, emphasising Joy’s panic, fear and pride.
You may see immigrants differently after Raging Grace: appreciate their sacrifices, loneliness, patience and kindness (Gloria and Joy) in menial jobs and the exploitative behaviour of all kinds they have to put up with from their host-country Britons, while never ceasing to have to smile through it. Unless they take action, Joy and Grace are at the mercy of either patronising Katherine (Leanne Best) or manipulative and uncaring Mr Garrett (David Hayman). Joy’s speech sums it up “We do all these things, we don’t need help, you do.”
Raging Grace also emphasises Filipino pride in the Filipino culture, though in Britain this can only manifest itself in safe spaces.
“A first-rate suspenser with a sociopolitical soul”
– Variety
Raging Grace is the Evening Standard‘s Film Of The Month.
Paris Zarcilla interview
Raging Grace premiered at SXSW, where it won the Grand Jury award for Best Narrative Feature, and won Best Original Composition in a Feature Film at the Music and Sound Awards 2023. Raging Grace is released on 29 December 2023 in the UK.
