We Still Say Grace (2020)

We Still Say Grace: Directed by Brad Helmink, John Rauschelbach. With Holly Taylor, Bruce Davison, Rita Volk, Arianne Zucker. The teenage daughter (Holly Taylor) of a religious fanatic (Bruce Davison) attempts to escape her father’s delusional suicide pact after three strangers break down near her family’s remote rural compound.

“For the first 50 minutes or so the movie manages to rise above its familiar premise: the group of hip young people with a car break-down near an isolated family of rural folk. Here, u0026quot;Haroldu0026quot; plays the patriarch of an ultra-devout Christian family that live without a phone in a remote country area. He offers to help and invites the young men into his home on condition that they abide by his rules.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOf course, the farmer has daughters; and so part of the plot will center on one of them being peeled off via an attraction between the younger daughter and one of the three young men. So far, so good; and the movie does a decent job of not simply turning Harold into a hypocrite Christian who mouths platitudes while hiding dark secrets (which he obviously does).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe problems come in the last thirty minutes. First, the movie is quite a bit too long, and so the slow burn becomes a drag by that point. Second, the film is a social-psychological thriller for the first hour but then switches gears and veers into horror territory with some pretty stark episodes toward the end. The problem is the disjuncture from what came before. What started in Hallmark Channel fashion ends in u0026quot;Farm Houseu0026quot; (2008) territory. The acting is decent, but the material does not always bring out the finest in what is an experienced group of actors.”