Admittedly I didn't have high hopes for liking "Mercy", and this was based on a couple of indicators. The plot is adapted from a largely unknown short story by Stephen King (= the author is overrated and most of his short stories are unimpressive) and the lead character is a 10-year-old kid whose first line in the film is: "my grandmother has always been my best friend." But it turned out to be better than I expected, particularly thanks to a series of weird and inexplicable story aspects and a surprisingly sinister atmosphere throughout. Single mom Rebecca (beautiful Frances O'Conner of "The Missing") is forced to move back to her remote parental house, along with her two teenage sons, because her mother requires constant care during her recovery of a stroke. There always circulated strange and morbid stories about grandma Mercy. When she was a beautiful 20-year-old woman, she couldn't get children and this nearly drove her insane. Suddenly one day, after mysteriously having vanished over the hills, she's expecting triplets! Shortly after the babies were born her husband died, supposedly in a freak accident where he split his own head in two with an axe (!) and two of her three children are mentally unstable. Now, at the end of her life, grandma Mercy still seems to be possessed with an evil entity. Is this "Hastur", who she keeps driveling about, the demon who impregnated her and what impact does the bloodline have on her grandson George? It's safe to state that "Mercy" is better and more effective in raising eerie topics than at answering vital plot questions and ensuring continuity. The entire climax is a mess and I, for one, didn't really understood what was going on. Some things are spooky but don't make the slightest bit of sense, like George talking to a cute but dead girl from his neighborhood or Dylan McDermott patiently waiting for something to happen. Shirley Knight, as grandma Mercy, is more dead than alive for most of the film's running time, so it would have been so much easier if the family opted for euthanasia.
