The Frustration of Underexposure in Log: A Grading Lesson

I recently graded a short film where I pushed the underexposure limit with an ALEXA Mini, thinking I could recover it in DaVinci Resolve. The goal was a high-contrast, moody look, so I deliberately exposed for the highlights, letting the shadows fall significantly. While it was possible to bring up the shadows, the trade-off in noise and color fidelity was harsher than anticipated, even with the ALEXA's phenomenal latitude. I used a custom LUT designed for a 'gritty' look, but it only exacerbated the problem, blocking up the deepest blacks and introducing an artificial color shift in the mid-tones when I tried to lift them. What did work, eventually, was abandoning that LUT, manually building a node tree that focused on gentle shadow lifts and noise reduction (using Resolve's temporal and spatial tools), followed by a secondary grade for color accuracy. However, this process was extremely time-consuming and the final image, while acceptable, never quite achieved the clean, rich blacks I'd hoped for. It reinforced the hard lesson that even with top-tier cameras and powerful software, good exposure is still paramount. Do you find that certain Log gammas tolerate underexposure better than others, or is it universally a battle?