In many ways this is a less than average film, especially until one acclimatises to the POV approach. Some aspects appear below average, others occasionally way better than that.
Why is it so inept? To answer that you look to your own understandings, stand by to disagree with this:
To me, first viewing, the power was not in the story content but in considering it as a parable about about the everyday world, one that some might recognise and others not. I understood Grace to relate to 'failed coming of age' stories rather than The Exorcist. I accept that the director/ writers will have understood this as possession exorcism. For failed coming of age I need to ignore a lot of parts as unreal. To ignore: Evil background sounds at the start, smeared lipstick, blank mirror, taking biscuits to church, etc, etc. I was ignoring most of the picture.
To me this is an unreal story that can be accepted as tolerably okay fiction. Except there is that other side, too, that can make parts of it real. Do I rate this as 4/10 or 10/10? 8? 5?
*
Her experience at starting as a living away from home student, bliss, escape from the home sources of the chains. She is now close to people with very different ways, just they are too different for her to always be able to deal with in what most would interpret as worthwhile sense. She is chained. Little girl level rather than mature. She is disaster, though a guy does show willing to try to accept her, she can be pretty.
Her experience of her fellow students and of the clergy at home is varied, her perception changes a lot. I also wondered if she was exhibiting symptoms of an 'Imperious' equivalent towards being protected from the snares of the student world. I also wonder about gargoyle creation. Her behaviour to her room mate's possessions is foul. There is that guy interested in her, but afterwards he prefers not to answer her call.
The clergy she deals with at home, to me the clergy in particular were shown as trying to solve the wrong problem, as if it were The Exorcist, hence blocking a useful solution. Climb every mountain, only one mountain allowed.
Myself, I assume that The Exorcist type possession is likely to be rare. Much more commonplace as 'Imperious' type possession, also that 'failed coming of age' is likely to be a fairly commonplace form. Gargoyle creation, what can happen to those who fail 'coming of age'? There will be other modes that parallels to possession can occur in. That these might be commonplace, the state of politics today is what tells me that.
*
So much for my first viewing of Grace, The Possession. I was finding that I could not find most of it watchable, so was dismissing big unwatchable chunks and putting in how I thought it should go in order for the bits of the story I noticed to seem solid. Those who passed any age 17 test well will not accept my re-interpretation at all. Those who failed badly will have their own re-interpretations, based on their own reality. Nothing like mine. Those in the middle? Who knows?
Second time around I was accepting the POV camerawork as a lot less jarring and I found that I was looking at the story how it is written and directed and acted, rather than how I feel it should have been created. The idea of this being a coming of age story did not click, second viewing. Instead I was seeing it as a possession / exorcism fiction story. But very unreal fiction, wow oh wow, the writer / director has an outsiders view of the land of the cursed, for solid stuff try Welcome To The Dollhouse (1995). I was also influenced by the soft porn into thinking that this was a riveting film.
Third viewing, boring and empty and unreal. Not something I find interesting, but I rate it as 5.
For an unusually high quality story by someone with a very different sort of outsider's view, try Eyes Shut Wide (1999), the final film by Kubrick.
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