Frailty - I Have A Dream

Apologies for the lateness on this bad girl, but my collaborators are less than stellar when it comes to being timely. Now, this movie came very highly recommended as a horror gem, so it was tough to be unimpressed. However I managed it like the champion I am. I did not find it scary in the slightest. But what constitutes a horror film? Is it that the movie scares the pants off you, or is it literally a portrayal of horrific events? Because while there were no moments of true fear, the plot's crux is a real cocktail of childhood trauma and mentally deranged fathers, which I suppose must lend this movie the label of horrific, and by extension, the claim of being a horror film at its core.

The film starts with Matthew McConaughey going into the office of an FBI agent and beginning to tell his life story due to its prevalence to a current killing spree of a murderer known as 'God's Hand'. He tells Agent Doyle it must be his brother Adam who committed suicide very recently. Doyle begs for elaboration so he spins him a yarn about his boyhood with his widowed father, who one day had a sleeping visitation from an angel tasking him with rooting out/destroying demons. He acquires special gloves, a pipe for rendering demons unconscious and an axe for 'delivering justice' (though free of Head and Shoulders this time... College joke - loose). The axe is called Otis. Hells yeah. Young Matthew questions his father's sanity, but Adam accepts it, and the story slowly unravels as Matthew Jr. tries harder and harder to thwart Pop's actions and Adam embraces them. He continues telling the story as Agent Doyle drives him to where he claimed to have buried his deceased, murderous brother, and events take a turn for the unexpected.

This was brought to us by Bill Paxton in his directorial debut and he also starred as the deluded father. The cast are uniformly very fine. Paxton has an air of menace tinged with forthright conviction that tips him just far enough to allow the audience to appreciate his balancing act on the precipice of sanity. He imbues every act with a bizarre sincerity that - while less sadistic and torturous to watch - generates an aura of unease. I'm a big fan of Mr. McConaughey, and this is further evidence to support his movement away from schmaltzy rom-coms that he has continued with Jeff Nichols' Mud at Cannes this year. He's very soft-spoken, and presents a broken soul at first in line with his demoralising parental influence, but his soft tone becomes more cobra-like as the twists begin to come to light throughout the ending. Bravo to him. The contemporary timeline is rounded out by Powers Boothe (seriously? what a name!) as Agent Doyle, who follows a similarly effective arc throughout the developments in the tale, and  portrays a damn good listener without trying to steal anyone else's thunder. Finally, the two young boys playing the sons growing up together are remarkably nuanced for their age, and their conflicted takes of their father's claim interact brilliantly on screen.

The production design is pretty solid. You really feel this sense of the small American town in Texas where everyone is probably inbred and financially comfortable enough in life to just get by. Their family house shows signs of love throughout, and their back shed - eventually kitted out to be the ultimate in demon killing chambers - is pretty atmospheric. The music, editing and cinematography didn't particularly stand out as highlights or let downs, but with a first-time director, I have some suspicions that their vision would have been greatly helpful in piecing together this debut. Paxton has definitely stretched himself as an actor and craftsman here, and in his entirely uncompromised vision he has succeeded in pushing his boundaries.

The plot is quite interesting in its denouement - so interesting in fact that it's almost a cop out. SPOILERS AHEAD - KILL THEM WITH FIRE AND SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH. It turns out that old mate Matthew isn't the son called Fenton (who was the Doubting Thomas) - he's Adam (the blind believer). And he may in fact have special powers (contrary to any logic developed in the viewer by watching the goings-on through the sceptical lens of Fenton) which are revealed when he kills the Agent for the demonic murder of his elderly mother (matricidal prick...). While it is pretty confusing at first (Gotcha! You thought I was that guy who was pretty logical, but I'm actually this guy who is kinda batshit!), it makes sense for his 'mission from God' to kill the evil FBI Agent. When his being touched by some kind of force is confirmed by the revelation that Adam has been entirely erased from the FBI surveillance tapes and that he can tell people's character through touch (Frailty boasts a lovely closing quote), it generates an entirely new take on the plot of the film up to that point, and the reversal is overwhelmingly clever.

Now our mutual friend Albert von Hammerschmidt has joined us once more to convey his over-privileged childhood through his critical view of Paxton's film.

Albert von Hammerschmidt's contribution (transcribed by small Tahitian boy #13):

A hoy hoy, Hammerschmidt here again, doing my weekly sexual offenders community service! I have again been mixing with lesser classes, watching the movie Frailty. First of all Matthew's southern drawl is about as unrefined as a Jameson’s number two that's only been aged for a measly 20 years. Disgusting! The child actors were hopeless and really only have a future in toothpaste commercials. I fell asleep 4 times in this film and still understood what was happening - that is how simple the script was. The writer should be stripped of all pens, laptop computers, typewriters and clothes and be exiled into writing the memoirs of smelly homeless people. The twist was poor (much like you my dear readers) and was left feeling unfulfilled by a film that could have been so much more. One and a half smelly homeless memoir writers out of 5 (for this rating I intend to actually cut a smelly homeless memoir writer in half... Or perhaps use a dwarf). Albert von Hammerschmidt out.

Look, it's a good movie in my opinion. It really is an understated, small-scale, thought provoking film which toys with our expectations of story telling and perception. But it's just not that scary - as I said before, horrific but not frightening. Is this so bad? Some horror fans will disagree but I didn't mind too much. I have thus bequeathed it 34 cubed metres of my dungeon (which measures a spacious 2 by 4 by 6 metres), and I sincerely hope that Matthew McConaughey's Killer Joe is marketed as a horror film because I want any excuse to watch him in this kind of role again for this blog. Take care readers.

Enjoy yo'self some trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW6TlPMHXgk