A superficial bruise(Originally published 2002)
More than anything in the world, Bill Paxton’s overpraised thriller, "Frailty," wants to ride what’s left of M. Night Shyamalan's coattails, which have been ripped and ruined over the years thanks to a long line of supernatural-thriller-wannabes eager to hop on "The Sixth Sense" bandwagon.
But in spite of featuring an engaging first half that’s genuinely unsettling and an understated performance from Matthew McConaughey that suggests the actor has some life in him yet, "Frailty" is ultimately as superficial as a bruise, a film so manufactured to crank out an absurd series of final twists for the sake of offering some final twists, it does so at the cost of all that came before.
Told in flashback by McConaughey to an FBI agent played by Powers Boothe, the film is about a single father identified only as Dad (Paxton) who wakes one evening to find God glowing in the center of his bowling trophy.
Instead of offering Dad the gift of a perfect game or a shiny new ball, God offers Dad something potentially more rewarding: the divine order to kill those demons living in his West Texas neighborhood.
Thrilled by the prospect, Dad wakes his two sons--12-year-old Fenton (Matt O'Leary) and 9-year-old Adam (Jeremy Sumpter)—to tell them the good news, which is when the bad family vibes start.
Indeed, while Adam is young enough to be snowed by his father’s religious rhetoric, Fenton is old enough to know that the murders his father is preparing to commit are the product of madness. Worse, it’s Fenton who’s burdened with the responsibility of saving himself and his brother before Dad truly goes berserk and kills them both.
At this point, "Frailty" spools away from Paxton and his screenwriter, Brent Hanley, even while its mood of terror intensifies. So intent is Dad that his sons connect with God as he has, he insists that they join him in the murders, a gruesome task that involves collecting those people on Dad’s divine list, taking them back to the family’s newly constructed dungeon, beating them over the head with a lead pipe and then wielding an ax named Otis into their heads, throats, arms and legs.
The subject of "Frailty" is such that it can’t help eliciting the revulsion it seeks; there’s no denying there's physical power when Dad swings his ax–or emotional power when he turns to his sons and asks them to do the same.
But by the end, what’s also clear is that “Frailty” ultimately had no interest in these children at all beyond using them to generate a few thrills and to create a marketing buzz: We don’t learn anything about them beyond what serves the plot--or the ridiculous twists that come at the end--which seems to me a decision that would have been a more appropriate place for Dad to bury his ax.
Grade: C-
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