When Grain Saved My Day (Mostly): Resolve's Grain Management

Trying to salvage a low-light shot from an ALEXA Mini with a pushed ISO (due to a last-minute lighting fail) led me down a rabbit hole of grain management in DaVinci Resolve. The original footage had a splotchy, digital noise that screamed 'cheap production.' I first tried typical noise reduction tools like Neat Video, which did clean it up, but it also smoothed out too much detail, making faces look waxy and lifeless. What worked surprisingly well was embracing a more filmic approach: I cranked down the noise reduction significantly in Resolve's built-in Temporal NR and then added film grain using Resolve's `Film Grain` OFX plugin. I specifically used a 35mm stock emulation, adjusted the strength and scale, and even colorized it slightly to match the overall palette. This masked the offensive digital noise with something more aesthetically pleasing and organic. What didn't work was trying to over-clean the footage; it just looked artificial. The sweet spot was balancing subtle cleanup with intentional artistic degradation. Now, I'm finding myself wondering: for truly challenging low-light material, are there specific grain textures or Resolve plugin settings that consistently feel more 'natural' than others across different cameras, or is it always a subjective, shot-by-shot compromise?