Frailty

The charismatic actor Bill Paxton made his feature directorial debut with 2001’s Frailty, an unsettling, twisty thriller with noir underpinnings. Set in Texas, the film opens on an appropriately dark and stormy night, as Matthew McConaughey’s Fenton Meiks enters FBI offices ready to make a confession. He reveals to agent Wesley Doyle (an intimidating Powers Boothe) that his brother Adam is the “God’s Hand” serial killer and that he knows where the victims are buried. From there, the movie shifts gears into a Gothic family drama, periodically returning to Fenton and Agent Doyle as a framing device. Flashbacks narrated by McConaughey introduce us to the tight-knit Meiks family, composed of the unnamed father (played by Paxton) and his two sons, Fenton (Matt O’Leary) and Adam (Jeremy Sumpter). Fenton is protective of his younger sibling, a gullible boy eager to impress their father, a widowed mechanic. The atmosphere in the household is loving and supportive—until Paxton’s character begins experiencing visions and everything goes haywire. Claiming that an angel has directed him to “slay” demons disguised as human beings, the father quickly devolves into a full-on axe-wielding serial killer, recruiting his two sons as accomplices. Adam is gung-ho for the mission, while Fenton struggles mightily with his father’s apparent madness and attempts to convince his brother to run away with him.

The Meiks family dynamic is incredibly nuanced, and the young actors both give convincing performances. Paxton is sufficiently wild-eyed and manic, continuing to pose as a father figure even as he ropes his children into horrific crimes. The murder scenes are highly uncomfortable to watch, mostly due to the kids’ involvement, but Paxton, the director, refrains from showing excessive violence or gore. For a novice filmmaker, he is a surprisingly deft storyteller, selectively withholding key information in an otherwise wordy, narration-heavy movie. He is aided greatly by veteran cinematographer Bill Butler’s imaginative camerawork, which includes slick visual transitions between the past and present, as well as Brent Hanley’s moving script, inspired by a real-life criminal case, that guides the actors’ heartrending performances. Once the plot twists begin to take effect during the last third of the film, Paxton has already crafted a nagging sense of dread that quickly turns into an overwhelming despair. Frailty is consistently eerie and horrific, right up until its final moment, but also remarkably poignant. It’s unfortunate that Paxton only directed one more feature (2005’s The Greatest Game Ever Played), as he certainly could have enjoyed a parallel career as a talented filmmaker.