When it comes to movie conventions, there are certain lines that directors just don’t cross. You don’t show actors going to the bathroom. You don’t let them look at the camera. You don’t kill dogs (although murdering people is fine) and you don’t inflict violence or cruelty on children. Frailty obliterates that last boundary in spades as longtime studio actor Bill Paxton moves behind the camera in his feature-film directorial debut.

To be reductionist, Frailty is a horror flick of the Stephen King pulp fiction ilk. A man claiming to be Fenton Meiks (Matthew McConaughey) emerges at a Texas FBI bureau from out of nowhere claiming that he knows the identity of the God’s Hand murderer, a serial killer who has slain a slew of victims all over Texas. The improbable reason? The killer is his younger brother, and to prove it, he is going to explain how the current situation came about. So, we flash back to 1979, back to Fenton’s childhood where we see that his father (Paxton) directly influenced the current spate of killings. Back in the day, Dad was possessed by the notion that his purpose in this world was to do God’s work, namely destroying demons and expelling them from the earth. Hence, he was the original “God’s Hand.” Angels in hallucinations visit Dad during the day to inform him of the next targets, and armed with a divinely supplied axe, lead pipe and garden gloves, he dispatches his victims and buries them in the rose garden of a neighbouring church. Worst of all, Dad enlists the aid of his sons Fenton and Adam and forces them to watch as he does the deadly deed and compels them to keep mum about Dad’s extra-curricular activities.

With all of this unnamed father’s machinations, it should seem that the father character is clearly chemically imbalanced, but Paxton strives to keep his character’s sanity ambiguously, if not intriguingly, in doubt. As he gathers his items and receives his list of victims, Dad’s heavenly visions are flushed out in computer-generated glory that seem convincing enough. However, the film’s point of view leaves questions as to the full depth and breath of each character’s true intentions. Or, at least we would question motives were the plot not so laborious and plodding in its pacing.

Frailty is told from McConaughey’s standpoint in a manner eerily reminiscent of Keyser Soze’s narrative in The Usual Suspects. As such, the first two-thirds of the film’s action is filtered through Fenton’s perspective and therefore tainted. However, McConaughey is barely worthy to serve even as Kevin Spacey’s personal assistant as he authors his own tale. McConaughey lacks the charisma, the composure and the personality quirks to make his recounting of the events truly compelling, although the vignettes depicted on screen do redeem his bland detachment to a certain extent.

Though Frailty is Paxton’s debut, he has experienced vicarious tutelage under the likes of director James Cameron and ventures on a polar opposite from his frequent employers. Where Cameron frequently descends into overblown melodrama and explicit sentimentality, Paxton exhibits an oddly compelling restraint. He pulls fewer emotional punches than might be expected in this, a tale of questionable morality, and leaves almost all the gore offscreen. Using sounds suggestive of the violence that the father inflicts on his demons, the camera pans to the reaction shots of his children, and in those moments, the images truly chill because it underscores the torment inflicted on young Fenton.

Ably portrayed by then 13-year-old Matthew O’Leary, his young Fenton is a refreshing answer to the saccharine, doe-eyed countenance of Haley Joel Osment’s innocent personas. Like Osment’s character in The Sixth Sense, Fenton is the subject of a supernatural affliction, but O’Leary’s response is hardened, stoic and fairly riveting for its intensity. After Fenton’s father tells of his divine task, Fenton responds with understandable skepticism that eventually decays into abject panic and hardened frustration as the body count mounts. When Dad excessively punishes Fenton for insubordination, O’Leary invests in his tortured son role a blank-faced, darkly brooding quality that is wonderfully mature considering his age.

Ultimately however, the failing of Paxton’s efforts lies in the thinness of his material. His first film is noteworthy in that it is one of the few horror flicks to use children as more than token set-pieces to elicit terror from an audience, but it at times feels like Paxton is trying to stretch the skin of an hour-long episode onto the frame of a full-length feature. Frailty doesn’t delve into the father’s psyche, leaving the psychology out of the thriller, and uses one huge leap of improbable FBI procedure to span the gaping hole in his plot and stitch together the two disparate halves of his story.

Most of all, Frailty begs the question as to why Paxton chose to tell this story his first time behind the camera. Paxton clearly has learned the art of showing a story (as opposed to overtly telling his explicit intentions), but when actors decide to add the director title to their resumes, the tales they tell tend to be either acute, personal (melo)dramas or “idea” films that tackle supposedly weighty and relevant subject matters. Unfortunately, there is nothing personally touching to Paxton or particularly universal about the “religiously-motivated-murderous-sociopath” genre. Paxton does defy convention and wrench hearts with his portrayal of children. His work with the young O’Leary is commendable, but his frailty perhaps lies in choosing which yarn and how long to spin it.

film

Frailty

Directed By Bill Paxton

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton

Lion’s Gate Films