Frailty (2002) Review

Frailty (2002)

Frailty follows Fenton Meiks, who after the death of his brother, comes clean about his brother’s secret life as a serial killer, as well as the religiously motivated murders by their father that led them down that path. 

From the jump, there is something eerie about Frailty that you can never quite put your hand on. Perhaps it’s Bill Paxton, fraught with ideas that the Lord has bestowed upon him a mission to destroy demons disguised as humans. Maybe it’s the impending trauma of his mission that will scar and haunt his children or form them into his own image. Or possibly, it’s all of the above, but that all along, the mission was real and we’ve been face to face with a real serial killer all along. There’s a sort of Abrahamic, Old Testament, God’s wrath kind of horror then, that no matter how many times Paxton “unmasks” the demons and subsequently kills them in front of his kids, it’s just as horrifying to witness as the first go ‘round. 

And of course, the twist…as all along, we’ve witnessed and heard the story from Fenton’s point of view, only to find out that he was Adam all along, continuing his father’s Godly slayings, having truly believed the entire time. Slowly watching the brainwashing of one son while the other develops resentment towards his father and God, to then pulling back the cover and showing their father was never actually crazy, just a fucking insane twist to an already insane movie. 

We get an intense cast as well, in Powers Boothe, Jeremy Sumpter, Matt O’Leary, Matthew McConaughey, and Bill Paxton. Paxton is rightfully brilliant and terrifying in his directorial debut, that when paired with McConaughey’s gradually haunting performance, makes this one hell of a freaky movie that only gets creepier. 

Frailty, directed by Bill Paxton, is one of those rare thrillers with a shocking twist that hasn’t quite hit the mainstream yet, making the film a genuine jaw-dropper, not only in it’s themes of childhood trauma but also in it’s ideas of religiously motivated fanaticism. 

8.9/10