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Frailty
By Dave DePino
Since the beginning of time, men have claimed callings from God to go out and rape, pillage and kill their neighbors. This absurdity can be proven by just flipping on the news or picking up your daily newspaper. The insane notion-certainly not sanctioned by any heavenly power of goodness-has also, from time to time, enveloped individual men and women to be a killing machine. It is the timeless story of good and evil as one sees it or as one is told to see it.
In writer Brent Hanley's thoughtful and scary, psychological thriller/mystery, Frailty, - his screenwriting debut - the subject is presented in a way reminiscent of an all-time favorite, Night of the Hunter. This is no coincidence as actor/first-time-director Bill Paxton claims to have been influenced by this film and several others of this eerie, Southern Gothic genre. Paxton's resulting film comes with, as per the press material, a ringing endorsement from Stephen King, James Cameron, and Sam Raimi, all of whom have been known to make a few hairs stand on end, themselves.
The film opens in FBI agent Wesley Doyle's (Powers Boothe) office. There is a full-scale manhunt going on for a serial killer. The walls are covered with photos of multiple crime scenes of the notorious "God's Hands Killer."A rather strange young man enters(Matthew McConaughey)and introduces himself as Fenton Meiks. He tells Doyle that it is his younger brother Adam who is responsible for the grisly, murder spree. He adds that Adam has killed himself.
The young man's story is a bit bizarre, but the agent listens and finds himself driving with Fenton into a rural landscape and to the Meiks home, digging in the family rose garden. En route, Fenton tells the story of his childhood, shown with extensive flashbacks and very well handled narration. About twenty years earlier, Daddy Meiks (Paxton), a recent widower and decent, hardworking man, is doing his best to be a single parent. His boys, Adam (Jeremy Sumpter) nine and Fenton (Matt O'Leary) twelve, are regular, healthy, well-adjusted kids. Life is good until one night when Dad bursts into the boys' room waking them. He tells them he has had a visit from an Angel. He tells them that they have been charged with a holy mission from God. There have been demons sent in the disguise of normal, ordinary men and women, and it is to be their responsibility to kill them. Adam soon plunges head first into his dad's phantasm of heavenly justice and goes into slaughter mode, but Fenton thinks his dad must have gone totally insane and that his brother is being taken down an irrevocable path of evil. Fenton can't bring himself to be part of the slayings and is locked up for punishment. He is tormented by his loyalty to his family and his knowledge of right and wrong. The years following are sketchy at best; they lead to the present and some tricky twists and turns to the tale.
Director Paxton doesn't take the themes of Hanley's fine script as a green light to go bonkers with blood and gore, slashing and trashing for the sake of shocking audiences. As a matter of fact, the atrocities take place off screen. Neither does he indulge in, or rely on, melodramatics to tell the story. He creates a situation where one has to decide if Dad is merely a genuine psychotic or if the devil, or some evil force, has fooled him. We never really think Dad has been taken over - or do we? The script keeps us appropriately in the dark on the aspects of what was really up with Daddy-Dearest. Paxton sets into place a terrific build of dramatic tension that doesn't slacken even when you think you've got the twist in hand. Atmospherics are also important in gothic storytelling of any era. Paxton along with cinematographer Bill Butler, art directors Nelson Coates and Kevin Cozen, and musical composer Brian Tyler do wonderful work in setting the milieu. Actor Paxton does his usual, solid, always believable work. Here he blends gentility and terror into one lost soul. Noted for his roles as the other-guy, or a leading man in smaller or indie films, maybe Frailty will win him his long overdue respect and praise - perhaps as director as well. Boothe, also a mainstay on screen, ties the horrifics to earth. McConaughey plays the innocent with delicious and tantalizing ambiguity. Hopefully this will lead to more serious work for him and no more Wedding Planners. The young actors, O'Leary and Sumpter, actually pivot the drama. If they didn't totally grasp and hold on tight for the emotional roller-coaster ride, the film wouldn't get off the ground in the first place. O'Leary, especially, shoulders a lot of that responsibility quite well.
Might I suggest two videos in relation to this film. First: the 1955 classic, based on the Davis Grubbs' novel, The Night of the Hunter with a splendidly horrifying and chilling performance by Robert Mitchum and stellar, supporting performances including Shelly Winters and Lillian Gish. This particular Southern Gothic tale places a demonic preacherman into the lives of a widow with two children. Here, also, the children (Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce) are pivotal to the drama and their performances need to be top notch, which they were. This film was a bit before its time. It also was the one and only film that the great actor Charles Laughton directed.
The second suggested film is the more recent ('98) A Simple Plan, directed by Raini. This is more of a modern, midwestern Gothic tale of temptation, greed, and murder in the aftermath of $4 million literally falling from the sky. Paxton displays the extraordinary depth that each ordinary man possesses. Here, the cast is pumped up with a zinging performance by Billy Bob Thornton. Also in the cast are Brent Briscoe, Becky Ann Backer and Bridget Fonda.
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