Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on April 11, 2002, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
When it comes to debuting directors, the horror genre needs more coming from an acting background than the music-video world. A fine example is Frailty, which reveals that actor Bill Paxton has kept careful mental notes throughout his long performing career, including many genre stints. I hate to use the phrase “thinking person’s horror film” because it suggests the two are mutually exclusive, but Frailty has a lot more on its mind than many genre exercises, including those that aspire to address issues of faith. Compare this movie to something like Stigmata (the work of a music-clip veteran) for a good case in point.
Frailty is one of those movies that asks the question, what is more frightening: the supernatural/spiritual, or someone who simply believes in it enough that he’ll commit human crimes in its name? Though the movie opens with Matthew McConaughey, as a man named Fenton Meiks, visiting an FBI agent (Powers Boothe) with information about a serial killer, the true protagonist is Fenton’s father, played by Paxton himself in flashbacks that form the bulk of the narrative. Billed only as Dad, Paxton’s character dotes on his motherless sons Fenton (played as a youngster by Matt O’Leary) and Adam (Jeremy Sumpter). He’s also a man with strong religious convictions—and one night, he wakes up his kids to tell them that he’s been visited by an angel, one that has given him the power to see demons in human form and assigned him as their destroyer.
Fenton, the slightly older of the two boys, dismisses his father’s claims. Then comes the night when Dad brings home a bound woman—his first “demon”—and kills her in front of his children’s eyes. His murders continue, and Adam becomes his loyal assistant while Fenton’s doubts grow stronger—a nicely turned, extreme variation on the way sons try to please or rebel against their parents. Paxton and scripter Brent Hanley pull off a few tricky balancing acts here: They present a man motivated toward evil by religious hysteria without condemning religion itself, and manage to maintain some sympathy for a father who not only exposes his children to violence but involves them as well.
Paxton grew up in the same kind of rural Texas area where Frailty is set, and if his direction is sometimes a bit square (we don’t always get the visual sense that the story is being told through a child’s eyes), he’s got an excellent eye for atmosphere and works extremely well with his cast. O’Leary (in a role similar to the one he played in last year’s Domestic Disturbance) and Sumpter tackle their difficult roles with aplomb, while McConaughey (another native Texan, adding to the verisimilitude) and Boothe compellingly carry their parallel subplot. Not surprisingly, Paxton’s own performance is the one that seems least under control; at times he seems to be just barely keeping his wildman persona from breaking through—but then, that’s fitting for a man trying to hold demons at bay.
While Dad’s crimes are gruesome (his weapon of choice is a none-too-biblical double-bladed ax), Paxton refrains from graphic violence. For a change, this seems neither like capitulation toward the current repressiveness nor a result of his own squeamishness, but simply of a piece with his overall approach. It is the emotions involved in the murders, rather than the bloody results, that create the true horror in Frailty, and cause it to stick with you longer than a traditional splatterfest might. Oh, and if the film’s closing section seems to drag on a bit too long, stick with it; the story’s final revelation throws the previous events into a chilling, and fascinating, new relief.
