Clever me - I thought it'd be funny to watch Almost Mercy, followed up by Mercy. If only there was an Absolute Mercy or something along those lines, I'd be set. I really liked Almost Mercy... and that makes one, I guess. Mercy just didn't grab me in any way - and it felt like it was playing with kiddie gloves, like it's an amped up Goosebumps episode or something.
Mercy is based on the Stephen King short story "Gramma" from his Skeleton Crew collection, which means I've read it at some point in my life. But I have no recollection of it at all. It sounds like the main gist of the thing stayed the same (young boy and potentially evil grandma), but the setting and supporting cast have been changed dramatically. It's not like King's stories have the best cinematic track records anyways, so I doubt knowing any of this beforehand would have changed things. But it's worth reporting, I guess.
The film is about a boy named George (Chandler Riggs, better known as Carl from The Walking Dead TV show) - he starts the film with a voiceover saying how him and his grandma are best friends. You get a little peek as to why - she gives him the courage to stand up to a school bully by having him play a violin for a coiled and ready-to-strike rattlesnake (?) - but their relationship isn't super well-defined. She's his grandma, and that's enough. Anyways, grandma has a stroke and can't take care of herself anymore. After some (unseen) shenanigans, she is kicked out of the nursing home and is sent home for her farewell tour. George, his mother, and his slightly older brother (dad is nowhere to be found) head out to her dusty and creepy old house in the mountains of West Virginia to take care of her in her final days. Which seems to consist of her laying in bed in a catatonic state, the occasional violent fit, and glimmers of lucidity here and there.
Well, it turns out she may be evil or cursed or something. The locals talk about her in whispered tones, and when the priest shows up to welcome her home, she gives him the evil eye and frightens him off. Turns out (halfway-through *SPOILERS*, if you care) when she was a young woman, she really wanted babies, but couldn't have them. So one night, she ran out into the mountains, where there are apparently some supernatural beings or something (there's definitely at least one big cool wolf-dog thing with glowing eyes). And she got a little Evil Help. One the plus side, she got three kids out of the deal. One the negative side, it made her into a crazy, controlling lady who maybe abuses her family. Ultimately, her husband chops his own head in half with an ax. (Which is something I haven't seen before. And technically, still haven't... you see it shadow puppet style. Still cool though.) Anyhow, she's always been nice to George, but he's about to find out that the stories about the Evil in the hills are more than just legend.
My biggest issue with Mercy is how toothless it is. There is very little going on to raise the excitement level at all. I'm not sure if my daily horror movie viewing is making me numb to this sort of thing... I mean, I *think* it's trying. You get an attempted jump scare or two, some "gruesome" makeup (but no real gore), and the overall look for the film seems to be going for a quiet foreboding thing. (To be fair, the scenery of the mountains really is quite beautiful.) But for me it just felt totally flat. You kind of assume the whole Not Rated thing would imply some nastiness here and there, but it was strangely absent from Mercy. I'd say this could play unedited on TV and no one would have a problem with it.
There just isn't a lot of momentum... grandma's evil, George will eventually find out, final showdown. You know how it's going to shake out, and there aren't enough interesting things or characters on the sidelines to make it worthwhile. When some evil-looking paintings are the most frightening thing in your horror movie, you have a problem.
The performances aren't bad. Generally, I have trouble with kid actors, but Riggs is good here (on par with what little I've seen from him on The Walking Dead). He just doesn't have a lot to do. You get good but frustratingly brief turns from Mark Duplass (as drunk Uncle Lanning) and Dylan McDermott as a family friend still living in Grandma's neighborhood. Really, the best performance is from Frances O' Connor as George's mom. She's got the most interesting character, as she is balancing taking care of her kids and her mother, while heading back to a place that she got out of as soon as she possibly could when she turned 18. O'Connor clearly gets across both her determination as well as the exasperation of her character, and I was a little disappointed when she virtually disappeared in the final act.
So yeah, no tension, no real scares - my interest level was just flatlining the whole time. Mercy looks okay and is competent from a technical standpoint - there just isn't much life to it.
I would not recommend this film.
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