Raging Grace (2023)

Clunky, Often Creaky, Overlong State-funded Briflick Horror which feels like a Vanity Project - Raging Grace review by PV

OH so I can see why state funding encourages diversity etc etc etc but does EVERY SINGLE film our taxes pay for (via BBC films, BFI then also lottery funding) HAVE to go to films written/directed by women or 'people of colour' with female stories (where white males are absent or only shown as baddies) or various ethnic stories?

It is literally YEARS since I watched a state-subsidised British film written/directed by a white British man about white British (male) lives - other than other tickbox ones, whether gay or disabled or whatever. It is just getting tiresome and many of these tickbox #metoo #BLM movies are really not very good.

Just to add: the Philippines were NEVER the British empire, twas Spanish then from about 1900 American, then Japan invaded in WWII, then independent. The writer/director is of that background and grew up in the UK, so that makes it authentic (though I worry about the requirement for such tickbox authentic casting as if a 'white' person can only makes movies about people who look JUST like them) which is useful in these tickbox days to get state funding, for sure.

This is strangely old-fashioned horror, maybe more modern in the far east than here, I do not know. Use of sound and quick moves are tropes, and cliches, used for many decades - it all feels a bit 1970s actually. I like sound in films but the bangs/jumps are overuse here - as I said, very old-fashioned, like old horror films, even Hammer, the loud bursts of sound in the late 1950s Dracula films for example.

The cartoon character acting is a bit OTT for me, but I have seen it in Hong Kong films, and Japanese and Chinese films, so it seems more acceptable in the far east, as opposed to the naturalism of western acting styles. Who knows?

It is watchable, but gets very tiresome towards the end. All total tosh of course. Not believable at all in so many ways.

Maybe this needed someone more detached to be involved, to call out the vanity project indulgence, EDIT EDIT EDIT, rewrite rewrite rewrite. I believe the writer/director even got what must be a a family member (called PANCAKE) on the writing credit, Well that's a first.

I'd slice half an hour of flab off this story, much of act 3, the silly final display. And I always think druggy dream sequences are a bit of an excuse for directors to indulge themselves with special effects and extras wearing silly costumes.

There is a point in this film where the main character preaches what I consider misinformation and near-hate against white Westerners incl Britain which could be called racist, Not on. This claim ONLY people of colour and immigrants are poor, disadvantaged or domestic staff/cleaners etc is wrong indeed. Plus there are MANY privileged and rich people of colour in the UK. Racialising the issue is wrong. It is a socio-economic class issue, if anything.

And remember, only 1 in 5000 people were 'upper class' in Georgian England so the VAST majority of Brits a( all but a few thousands were 'white') were not in that elite, not rich, and actually very poor and non-privileged and oppress - and STILL ARE. Try researching the hopeless lives of working class white boys all over the UK. The London townhouse featured here must be worth £3 million - and most white Brits do NOT live in such houses (Paddington, looking at you too in your £5+ million mansion).

So, I almost gave this 1 star. 1.5 stars because of the wonderful acting esp by David Hayman, though his casting as the cliched trope of the perpetual BADDIE white British man is Bollywood in its Britbashing racism. And that end scene is pure Bollywood- I have seen this a lot in films lately, Dr Who Beatles episode, and that Medusa Deluxe movie. I HATE that, I hate Bollywood; I hate song and dance numbers tacked on for no good reason!