Wow, Thanks! That does sound interesting. I wonder how long it will take to get down to the bottom of the US where I live.
I went ahead and pasted the article in case someone doesn't want to enter their name & password.
April 12, 2002
MOVIE REVIEW | 'FRAILTY'
When Dad Marches to a Terrifying Drummer
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Ultimate cinematic horror — the kind that slithers through your mind leaving a slimy residue of paranoia — is not a matter of trying to pass off a larger, more monstrous lizard than the one before as the latest and scariest incarnation of evil. It's usually something unseen, a force lurking in the darkness and left to the imagination. In "Frailty," a metaphysical thriller with few special effects, that horror is the righteously homicidal agenda that a God-fearing father instills in his children when his relationship with God suddenly warps into a fearful psychosis.
The warping takes place early in the movie, when Dad (that's all he's known as), a widower bringing up two young sons in a rural Texas village near Dallas, sits them down and explains with urgent gravity that he's had a vision. God, he informs Fenton (Matt O'Leary), who is 12, and Adam (Jeremy Sumpter), who is 9, has appeared to him in the form of an angel announcing that Judgment Day is at hand. For unknown reasons, God has chosen the three of them to hunt down and destroy demons disguised as people.
God, continues the father, will soon identify these demons, as well as the weapons needed to destroy them. And soon enough, Dad, while driving through the countryside, notices beams of sunlight slanting down on a shack. He stops his van, goes inside and discovers the shafts alighting on an ax stuck in a tree stump. Days later, while doing mechanical work under a car, Dad receives the names of the demons to be destroyed from a grim-faced golden-winged angel (the movie's only visual representation of a heavenly being).
James Hamilton/Lions Gate Films
In "Frailty," his debut as a director, Bill Paxton also stars as a father intent on killing human demons.
Terror, Timing and a Fanatic's Tale (March 31, 2002)
Motion Pictures Paxton, Bill
The first victim is a woman who is kidnapped from her home and certified as demonic when Dad puts his hands on her arms and experiences what appear to be severe electric shocks from the evil inside. Those jolts prove the presence of demons, he tells his children, and so the ax must fall. There are more killings to come. All are witnessed by the boys, although not by us, since the camera discreetly cuts away from the carnage.
"Frailty," which opens today in the New York metropolitan region, is the directorial debut of Bill Paxton, who stars as Dad. It is a meditation on faith of several different kinds. Religious faith and a belief in the miraculous is one. Faith in oneself and one's convictions is another. But by far the most important and troubling faith the movie explores is the instinctive faith children place in their parents.
Mr. Paxton's Dad may be the most terrifying father to appear in a horror film since Jack Nicholson went crazily homicidal in "The Shining." But at moments, he is also one of the most caring and solicitous. Intensely devoted to his sons, he is a proud and protective father so long as they follow his agenda. Even after an angel informs him that Fenton is a demon, Dad refuses to believe it. So that the boy might discover God, Dad locks Fenton in a dungeon, which the boy dug with his own hands, for a week without food and only a glass of water until God appears.
"Frailty" may be only a genre film, but it forcefully reminds us of the degree to which all of us are our parents' ideological captives when we're children. Religious and political indoctrination (or osmosis) from seemingly omniscient parents, after all, is how most ideology is handed down. And in an age when intolerant fundamentalist faith is once again ascendant, it is a theme worth dwelling on.
Brent Hanley's tautly constructed screenplay adds a clever twist by throwing in a generation gap. Fenton who is 12 and old enough to think for himself, decides his father has gone crazy and begs Adam to flee with him. But Adam, much as he adores his older brother, blindly adheres to his father's program.
The story is told in flashbacks by the grown-up Fenton (Matthew McConaghey) who, years after a series of unsolved killings known as the "God's Hands" case, visits F.B.I. headquarters and relates his family history to Agent Wesley Doyle (Powers Boothe). He names his brother, Adam, as the serial killer, although the truth turns out not to be that simple.
This creepy role is one of Mr. McConaghey's juiciest to date. And Mr. Boothe's federal agent is the latest and one of the meanest portraits in the actor's gallery of soulless flinty-eyed sadists. But the movie ultimately belongs to Mr. Paxton, whose Dad, but for his psychotic glitch, might pass as an ideally devoted working-class Texan father of two.
The screenplay has some clever tricks up its sleeve. One of the demons to be destroyed (not "murdered," Dad insists, since only people are murdered) is such a fuming stick of dynamite that there is a suggestion that Dad's inside track to God might indeed have given him special knowledge of who's naughty and who's nice. And the moment we think we're certain of who did what to whom, the movie throws in two or three extra plot turns to confound us.
"Frailty" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes profanity and scenes of violence.
FRAILTY
Directed by Bill Paxton; written by Brent Hanley; director of photography, Bill Butler; edited by Arnold Glassman; music by Brian Tyler; art direction by Nelson Coates and Kevin Cozen; produced by David Kirshner, David Blocker and Corey Sienega; released by Lions Gate Films. Running time: 100 minutes. This film is rated R.
WITH: Bill Paxton (Dad), Matthew McConaughey (Fenton Meiks), Matt O'Leary (Young Fenton Meiks), Levi Kreis (Adam Meiks), Jeremy Sumpter (Young Adam Meiks), Powers Boothe (Agent Wesley Doyle), Rebecca Tilney (Angel) and Luke Askew (Sheriff Smalls).
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." ~Voltaire
