Directed by Bill Paxton
Starring Bill Paxton, Matthew McConaughey, Powers Boothe, Matt O'Leary, Jeremy Sumpter and Levi Kreis
A little over a week ago, we lost a guy who I - no joke - consider to be a national treasure. Folks, Bill Paxton was IT. Regardless of the movie, regardless of the quality, this dude was unforgettable. Legitimately one of my three favorite actors of all time, his filmography reads like a laundry list of coolness. In Weird Science, Aliens, Predator 2 and True Lies, he made his trademark "hilarious douchebag" character an art form. Of course, there's also A Simple Plan, a movie that came many years before Breaking Bad and did the concept of "once you head down the wrong road, there's no turning back" better than that show ever could have - and with a more charismatic main star, to boot. And then there are his contributions to the horror genre - Near Dark, a woefully underrated vampire gem from 1988 that we'll be getting to in due time, and Frailty, the movie in question today and one of only two movies that the man ever directed.
Released in 2001, this flick came about at one of those weird "crossroads" periods for horror. The luster of Scream and the movies it inspired had started to wear off, and the massive wave of Japan-style thrillers hadn't hit the States quite yet. As a result, we were getting a bunch of movies that essentially threw crap at the wall to see what would stick. Frailty was different. It had a plan, it had a purpose, and it had an execution that managed to achieve near perfection. It also had plenty of advance critical raves, awesome actors, and an atmosphere cooked up by a first-time director that makes me want to come up with all kinds of spicy words to describe its immersive quality. And I don't know if you've been keeping up on current events, but that should be enough introduction, pal. On with the show.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a movie that has Matthew McConaughey. Not only that, it has Matthew McConaughey in non-surfer-bum mode. For many years, this guy appeared almost exclusively in cheesy romantic comedy movies, and it was a damn shame, because he's an awesome actor when he wants to be. In Frailty, he's small-town boy Fenton Meiks, and he has a story for FBI Agent Wesley Doyle (Powers Boothe). According to Fenton, his brother Adam is the "God's hand" serial killer that Doyle has been trailing for a long time, suggesting that Adam has committed suicide and that his future burial site - a rose garden in their hometown - is also where many of the previous victims are kept. If you can accept the slight logical leap that Agent Doyle would willingly go along with a single witness here without backup, get ready for some electric stuff, as Fenton begins spinning a yarn about the events that transpired when he and his brother were children.
In Thurman circa two decades ago, we meet young Fenton (Matt O'Leary) and Adam (Jeremy Sumpter, who I'm also a huge fan of - why isn't this guy in more stuff these days?). And then there's the father, never named in the script and appearing in the credits only as Dad Meiks. As I've already mentioned, Paxton has had a lot of great performances over his career, but this one ranks near the top. He's menacing without going completely over the top, even coming across as a little sympathetic at times, but always decidedly scary. See, Dad Meiks is the ORIGINAL "God's hand" killer, and it's gradually spelled out for us how this came to be, as he believes that he was touched by an angel (but not the TV show) to kill unrighteous "demons in human form." The sons are his helpers, and we're about to see how this goes down.
The routine goes like this - he is given a list of evil people to kill, abducts one of them and kills them in his rose garden. Before the axe-murder death blow, however, he touches the victim and is granted a vision of all of the bad stuff the person in question has committed. Frailty is a movie that is all about what you believe. And make no mistake, Dad Meiks definitely believes in his mission. The central conflict comes in the form of his sons, as Adam is a willing accomplice in all of this mayhem, while Fenton believes their dad is full of crap. See that last sentence? The movie makes it a lot more interesting than that, believe me.
For an indication of what we're dealing with, there's a "close call" subplot as the local Sheriff becomes suspicious of Dad Meiks, only to summarily meet a gruesome end at the hand of Dad Meiks' axe. It really can't be stated enough just how aces Paxton is in this role; he was clearly having a lot of fun directing himself, but the emotional element of dealing with his sons is always front and center for the world to see. As such, this actually is a movie that hooks your emotions. Things begin to deteriorate from this point on as Fenton's moral crisis gets the front-and-center treatment, leading to an abduction sequence that results in Dad winding up in his own rose garden. And this is the point where the script launches us into one slam-bang surprise after another that I NEVER saw coming when I first saw this one in theaters in 2001. Upon re-watching the film a few days ago, I can report that it still holds up. First-time watchers, prepare to have your world rocked.
Without a doubt, Frailty is effective horror. It truly is one of those horror films that rises above to become something much more. Everyone involved here, from Paxton to McConaughey to Boothe to the child actors was more than game for this material and put their all into it, and it shows. It's also a horror flick that has that "epic" presentation, with the present-day story of Fenton taking the FBI Agent on a little trip interspersed with the story of the Meiks family giving the whole thing a kind of poetic feeling. The script creates a trio of characters in the Meiks family that we genuinely care about even as we watch them do terrible things.
Those terrible things are given to us in intervals. There's not a whole lot of gore in this movie, but when the murder scenes hit, they make an impact. Especially the stuff that takes place during the flick's final act. *teaser*
I'm winding it up, reaching for it...yup, I can pull out the **** out of ****. Overall, this flick is just a really fun ride from start to finish, and it's definitely worthy of that old-school TNT "New Classic" moniker.
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