FRAILTY Review

Going on a road trip to Dallas just to watch a movie is not something I want to make a habit of, but this afternoon, night and early pre-morning hours were a blast to hit I-35 out of Austin headed for the trash décor of a suburban Dallas Cinemark.

Around 1400 (CST) The lovely Dorothy Parker arrived at Geek Headquarters to await the arrival of Patch’s muscle car. You see, on this trip, when I’m hitting the highway to see the feature directorial debut of Bill Paxton (aka Chet aka Hudson aka Severen aka Hurricane Dixon aka Morgan Earp aka Simon aka Zachary Cody aka Bokky and Hank Mitchell). Dorothy and I begin to try and talk, but the evil telephone never ceases ringing with morning show radio requests… ugh.

1533 (CST) Hits and the deadly Patch arrives with the rumbling muscle car sound on her road monster. We felt its roar in our sternums and knew this would be a wild ride. Patch and Dorothy Parker begin making fun of me… I realize that I-35 will become a river of my own tears as these two will destroy my will to live. By the end of the evening, they’ll of made me wear a felt hat, a coonskin hat, a Muppet skinned boa, Lolita’s sunglasses and I’d love every minute of it. But I’m weird that way, so Rav says to me at night.

1545 (CST) We hit I-35 laying rubber due North. It was like something out of CLOCKSTOPPERS as even at one moment the Amtrak train alongside seemed to be going so slow in comparison as to look like it was moving in reverse. Patch had removed all the numbers from her speedometer… it seems she knows when she’s going fast enough, which I’m told would mean she’d be in bed and asleep.

1550 (CST) Waco flies by in a blur.

1600 (CST) We sit in the parking lot of the Cinemark 17 with attached IMAX and wait for our souls to catch up, we believed they were left somewhere back in Pflugerville, but the winds would carrying them to us.

1830 (CST) Our souls arrive at the theater and we begin to consciously perceive our current location. Why is it that Cinemark theaters seemed to have been colored by the same people that paint aquarium rocks? And why is the lighting like a really bad discotheque?

1845 (CST) Bill Paxton arrives at the theater as numerous Dallas attendees begin screaming like crazed heroin junkies eating Lucky Charms in pursuit of that ebony black kettle of golden delights.

1915 (CST) We three swingin’ geeks hit the screening room, where I notice to my horror that I will have to ascend a 136 and three-quarters cliff face to get to my seat. Having seen CLIFFHANGER twice in theaters and VERTICAL LIMIT once too many, I clear the trip with little to no problems. I slipped only once and maybe broke my legs, but Patch tells me the Nazis will fix me up, and Dorothy Parker warns that I may talk under scopolamine. They begin giggling like the children of the damned.

1930 (CST) The feel of this soulless monstrosity of a theater is like that of the Tall Man’s Mausoleum had it been designed by the rejected visual artistes of the Teletubbies. The energy in the room is dead. Just no buzz, no vibe. It is like recording music in a concrete box… no warmth. The audience seems to not be pumped up, not excited.

1932 (CST) The audience has a mini-eruption of applause and cheers as Paxton enters the screening room. The applause dies quickly as the Regional Vice President of the Cinemark Theaters hits the microphone. Paxton takes over and gives a very lackluster introduction that just kinda tells ya that he knows the movie is about to play and he hopes you make it through the film. He then leaves instead of staying around for the film. Patch, Dorothy Parker and I all look at each other as if to say, "What the fuck?" Instantly the energy in the room sucks it back a bit.

1940 (CST) The movie begins.

Coming into this movie I was excited by three quotes:

"Electrifying. A tale of madness and elemental evil that keeps you guessing until the very last shot." – James Cameron

"The most disturbing horror picture I’ve seen since THE SHINING" – Sam Raimi

"It’s unique, thought provoking, edge-of-your-seat entertainment." -- Stephen King

The quote from Sam Raimi was the one that got me. I wondered… Had Sam seen HENRY PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER? Probably not, because frankly I find that film far more disturbing than Kubrick’s masterpiece. However, that’s beside the point. This was a movie that reminded Sam Raimi of the feelings of uneasiness that was throughout THE SHINING.

Personally I feel that Sam’s quote does a disservice to FRAILTY, by bringing that film up, I felt that I was forced to think throughout the film, "This is no where near as good as THE SHINING." Which isn’t fair to FRAILTY.

Bill Paxton’s first directorial effort is creepy, atmospheric and disturbing. It is. I think Stephen King’s quote is completely fair. However, James Cameron’s quote also was a disservice because you should not be trying to guess what the twist is going to be. That should just hit ya. Just ta-daaaaaaaa… That sort of thing.

Ok, what’s FRAILTY about?

Imagine this… You’re 11 years old. The biggest most important thing in the world to you is whether or not you’re going to go see FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF or BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA the next day. You and your little brother doze off to sleep when suddenly your wonderful father… Dad, who never has crackpot theories, who has never beat you, who has never done anything out of the ordinary… Suddenly he comes into the bedroom waking you up from your sleep telling you he had just had an audience with an angel sent from God. That JUDGEMENT DAY is on the way and that Satan had already released Demons upon the Earth and that the final battle was at hand, and your family. You, your brother and daddy were going to be given 3 magical weapons with which to combat these demons. You and your family would become the hand of God in the final battle.

Yeah. You’re 11 years old, Dad’s never been crazy before. What do you do?

That’s about as much as you frankly need to know. Suffice to say the magical weapons are an axe named OTIS, a pair of ratty gloves and a cinch pipe. Not exactly the Joshua’s Horn or Moses’ Staff or the Ark of the Covenant, but hey.. We live in mediocre times, God left all the really good ideas back around the times of the pyramids. Oh well, he’s pretty old.

What follows is a really terrible situation. Sort of the anti-Atticus Finch type of Dad. Paxton plays Dad as a loving and caring man that must destroy Demons that the world believes are regular people. He doesn’t like what he has to do, but who is he to question the will of God. And his sons… Well, they must believe, lest upon that Judgement Day they be sent to Hell instead of being embraced into the bosom of Heaven alongside his lovely wife. What he does to MAKE them believe…. Shivers mate shivers.

Paxton playing this father with the simple loving nature quality gives it an air of creepiness that really is quite pervasive. I actually began associating this understanding father with my dad. And given my mother had a complete 180 personality shift that left me wondering if the Invaders from Mars had poked the back of her neck… This sort of parental weirdness was easily within my ability to buy.

Matthew McCounaghey is the surviving brother that is telling the entire story of youth to Powers Boothe, an FBI agent in Dallas, Texas. All of this plays out very good.

Truthfully, I liked the movie while I watched it, but since I’ve left the theater, had the discussions on the road with Patch and Dorothy Parker, I’ve come to like the film even more. In fact, I like the film more at this point of the review than at the beginning.

Why is that?

Well, there is a lot here that I don’t want to talk about, but I like how this isn’t just a SLASHER FILM. How this movie deals with questions of sanity, faith, family and duty. I like the way Paxton plays with the nature of childhood in the film. The boy, Fenton… he’s the older boy. He really is quite wonderful, not only as an actor, but also as a character. He knows that all of this is wrong. He wants to not be a part of this. God doesn’t exist, God wouldn’t ask his father to start killing people and if God existed he’d make his father stop. Right?

FRAILTY plays with these questions very well. It shies away from the scary horrible gore. It instead focuses on Paxton’s DAD character and the two sons: Adam and Fenton. By focusing on this instead of the acts of horror they are conducting, you are making the horror more personal and less ejaculatory. This isn’t a Fangoria horror film, this is that creepy by yourself what if horror film.

My problems with the movie? Personally I didn’t care for the intentional underlining of the final resolution. I preferred a more ambiguous ending that left the questions as questions instead of answered. Though at least on our car ride through the blackness of Texas back to Austin there was a bit of debate over what really happened and the perceptions of all that. Was the film a 2 dimensional film about mental illness and murder? Or was it something else? Personally I say it was something else. I like that, its creepier, scarier and more disturbing if you interpret the movie in that other direction.

But then I’m the guy that believe Arnold was in the RECALL chair the whole time through TOTAL RECALL. Simply because I like that.

This isn’t a great film, but I thought it was damn good.

After the film, Paxton went on a nearly hour long Q&A with the Dallas audience that I was completely fascinated by. You see, I’m so spoiled by Austin audiences and the Q&A’s there that I couldn’t believe I was hearing confrontational questions coming at filmmakers. So much so that at one point Paxton said, "Damn this is a tough audience."

It seemed that they didn’t come to enjoy the film so much as they came to pick at it. Questions drawing a parallel between his movie and killing abortion clinic doctors and how he apparently endorses that… That this is a pro-child abuse film… That he stole this element from here and there… These were not the standard filmmaking questions or career questions. Nobody really asked about Chet or Hudson… There was a question about Sam Raimi, but none about James Cameron. A pretty hostile audience. That’s something I have never seen in an Austin special screening. VERY STRANGE. Patch, Dorothy Parker and myself were all a bit stunned. Amazed. Perplexed.

On the way back to Austin we talked about visions, what would you do if you woke up in the middle of the night with an angel from God asking you to take action? When would you believe? When would you have faith? Is there anything you could see that could compel you into actions like those in the film? It was a wonderful ride back, where we were enveloped in discussions about things that could be a bit of undigested gravy as we slowly passed a MASH helicopter on the way home…. Three times. Life is weird, and so is this movie.