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FRAILTY -
2002
Lion's Gate
Rated: USA: R |
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We've all had family problems. Uncle Pete gets drunk and blows up the gas grill.
You bring a new girlfriend home and Mom breaks out your potty training
video. Your pothead brother hides his stash in your carry-on bag. Dad
has a vision from God and starts hacking up the neighbors.
If you can't top that last one, you got nothin' on the kids in FRAILTY.
FRAILTY is a character-driven thriller, the kind of film that a first-time director
could easily have turned into a train wreck. But, in his directorial debut,
actor Bill Paxton (TERMINATOR, ALIENS, NEAR DARK) draws on his years
of experience in front of the camera to make his first time behind it
a solid success.
FRAILTY begins on a rainy night at a regional FBI office, as Agent Wesley Doyle (Powers
Boothe: SIN CITY) is visited by a bedraggled man (Matthew Mc Conaughey: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III) who introduces himself
as Fenton Meeks. Agent Doyle has been on the trail of the Hand of God
serial killer. Meeks says he knows who it is; his brother, Adam - who
committed suicide earlier that night.
Prepared to write Meeks off as a crackpot, Doyle asks how he knows this, and Meeks
launches into a horrifying story that takes us back to 1979. Young Fenton
Meeks (Matt O'Leary) and his younger brother Adam (Jeremy Sumpter) are being raised by their widower father (Bill Paxton). They're an ordinary, all-American, small-town family: until the night Dad wakes
his sons to tell them he's had a vision from God, who revealed to him
that the earth is infested with demons disguised in human form. In order
to prevent Satan from conquering the world, these demons must be destroyed
and it is the Meeks family's holy mission to hunt them down and wipe them
out of existence.
Adam accepts his father's words as gospel, but the older and wiser Fenton is disconcerted.
He tries to shrug the disturbing incident off, but over the next few days,
his father brings home what he says are their holy weapons: a pair of
gloves, an axe, and a lead pipe. Then, late one night, their father brings
something else home, a bound and gagged woman. He tells his sons that
she is a demon, and must be destroyed. But Dad seems hesitant until, after
removing the gloves, he touches the woman, whereupon he says he sees her
in her true, demonic form. Fenton sees nothing except his Dad burying
the axe in the helpless woman's body.
On his next hunting trip, Dad brings the boys along, and Fenton is forced to help
his father kidnap a middle-aged man. Once again, Fenton sees nothing but
a helpless victim as his father hacks the man to death. While Adam has
completely bought into their father's holy mission ("we're
like superheroes"), Fenton is old enough to realize that his
Dad is an insane serial killer, and that he has to do something to stop
his murderous rampage.
FRAILTY is a film that depends on mood over special effects, which is why I say
that, in the hands of a novice director, it could easily have failed.
If the actors were too over-the-top, or unconvincing, it wouldn't have
worked. If Paxton had been heavy-handed in his use of music, or false
scares (MY GOD, WHAT'S THAT? Oh, it's just a cat), or overly stylized shots (a trap so many new directors, insecure with their storytelling abilities, fall into), or had
he been egotistical, doing camera tricks that scream, 'Look at me, I'm
directing,' it would have undermined the film. But Paxton is no Project
Greenlight newcomer; he's a veteran of years of filmmaking, and wisely
puts the story first.
The single element that stands out is the performances. Paxton himself plays the
father convincingly, with an unwavering sincerity and single-minded belief
in his holy mission. When he professes his love for his sons, it's believable
and when he warns them of the deadly consequences of telling anyone about
it, it's chilling because it's equally believable. He truly seems like
a good man gone mad.
The performance by Matt O'Leary as Young Fenton is easily the best in the film, all the
more impressive because of his youth. Some of that is attributable to
Paxton's direction; he knows a thing or two about acting but there's no
denying O'Leary's raw talent. He perfectly captures the combined fear
and helplessness of a kid old enough to know something is very wrong,
but too young to muster the courage to defy his father and do something
about it. Jeremy Sumpter's Adam is not called upon to do as much, but
he is convincing as the innocent boy who believes everything his father
says without question.
The setting is as familiar as a million small towns across America. Only once do we
get a glimpse of the father's visions, when an automobile chassis he's
working under morphs into a cathedral ceiling, from which an angel wielding
a flaming sword descends. But for the most part, the environment is normal
though every inch of it is infused with terror as Paxton's mania grows
stronger.
Brent Hanley's story is engaging, suspenseful, well constructed, and moves forward at
a good pace. My only complaint is that the movie goes on for too long
after it feels like it should have ended, as if the filmmakers are trying
too hard to tie up every loose end. But that didn't hamper my enjoyment
of what came before.
FRAILTY is a smart thriller, generating fear not through blood and gore, but by
making the viewer look through the eyes of a young boy whose world has
turned upside down. I give FRAILTY four raving Shriek Girls. A very promising start to Bill Paxton's directing
career, and a just plain good movie.
This review
copyright 2002 E.C.McMullen Jr.
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