I just discovered that I have never written a review for this movie. How strange. I could have sworn that I did, some years ago, when I first watched this odd little horror movie that left a strong impression.
In the late 1990s, after the massive successes of twist endings (perhaps more precisely called "flip" endings) in "The Usual Suspects" and "The Sixsense," this type of endings that mess with the audience's heads was quite common. "Frailty" came a little too late to the party to capitalize on the trend. It took me a while to work out the meaning of the ending upon my first viewing, and the horror of it did not hit me until that evening. The horror lies not in a seemingly normal and loving single father (Bill Paxton) who suddenly starts to ax people, but rather in this world in which God orders people to ax other people by handing them a list of names. The killer is a hero because he regards his targets as demons and therefore inhuman, although they appear to be humans who have murdered someone or bad in some other way ... maybe? It is never quite clear, because one of the sons, Fenton, is labeled as a demon many years before he supposedly has committed murders ... but that part is not clear, either. The list of victims in his house might well have been a list of demons handed to his brother Adam. The definition of demons is not well established in the movie, which actually adds to the terror. Indeed, the delayed horror I felt that evening, some years ago, was from the vivid immersion into a world where a wrathful, Old-Testament God's ax falls on humans who are judged as demons whenever and wherever, with no room for any mercy or mitigation or bargaining or defense in court. Nope. Who needs hell when God is handing down direct punishment every day on earth?
This movie sat in my VOD queue for a few years before I finally rented and watched it again yesterday. The terror has faded, but I am no less disturbed than the first time, just from a different angle.
The second viewing leaves no doubt that the screenwriter, Brent Hanley, meant no ambiguity. The God is the literal wrathful Old-Testament God. The father (Paxton) is a literal superhero who carries out God's mission to ax demons in the world. The people he axed are literal demons who have murdered their spouses, parents, or children. And the mission is literally passed onto Adam, who axes his brother Fenton (can't be named Abel I guess), among others, because he too is a demon. Everything should be taken literally, and the flip is a plot device but not a source of doubt. The writer's intention is spelled out in his DVD commentary, which I have not heard but is partially transcribed by a kind blogger here.
Although I already had a gut feeling about the writer's family of origin while I was re-watching the movie, this comment confirmed my suspicion: "When people asked Hanley where the idea for the script came from, he likes to say that it's 100% autobiographical." In some sense, this is also indirectly confirmed by the fact that Hanley has not been able to get another screenplay made ever since. "Frailty" remains his only produced script. Usually everyone has at least one story to tell -- their own life story. Going beyond that requires something else: skills, imagination, insight into other people's psyche, etc. I have no doubt this story is 100% autobiographic for Hanley, particularly the conflicts between Fenton and the father and the most disturbing scene in the movie --- no, not the ax murders --- where the father locks the pre-teen boy Fenton in the underground bunker (which Fenton had dug) which no food and no toilet and one glass of water per day, poured through a hole by Adam. This feels real, and it is precisely where the horror lies on the second viewing.
The wrathful, vindictive, punitive God portrayed in the movie is not a religious figure in the Bible but rather the boy's human father. He is flesh and blood; he is not an allegory, not a vision, not a concept, and nothing imaginary or symbolic. He is 100% real and can hack your head off any minute.
I said "the boy" above, because I believe the writer is both Fenton and Adam, torn by both hatred and worship for his father.
There are a few other interesting reflections on this family drama. For example, Hanley mentioned in the commentary that the bunker scene was originally even worse, as Fenton was supposed to be afraid of the dark and he pissed and shat during the imprisonment. Paxton took these details out because even he found it unbearable. Even without these details, some female audience members walked out of the screening during this scene, which highlights the lack of any femininity in this family. Revealing, isn't it? This is an all-male family and all the relationships reek the Old Testament-style masculinity. Even more interesting is that the original script defined Agent Wesley's sin as murdering his daughter, which is changed to his mother by Paxton, which slightly weakens Hanley's theme about patriarchy but still hints at the absence of a mother figure in this universe, I mean, family.
Thus, all pieces of the puzzle fall perfectly into place. This is a story about a family in which the father is God. Definitely not the New Testament of God or Jesus, but the Old Testament God. He is the judge, jury, and executioner all in one. To the son he is almighty and death-giving to not only demons but also humans (ie, the Sheriff).
With zero experience with a wrathful or violent father when I was going up, it is only recently that I realized that many people love punishment, either doling out punishment themselves or, perhaps better, watching a father figure punish other people. Apparently the massively popular reality TV show "Cops" has many imitators on YouTube nowadays, garnering millions of views. Reading the comments section can be quite illuminating. I see the same thrill between their watching mentally unstable miscreants being cuffed and dragged into police cars and Adam's for his father's heroic mission of killing demons, including his brother Fenton. That is what terrifies me the second time.
Hence, the most chilling part about the ending is Adam's day job as the sheriff in small town Texas, judging who is a good man and who is a demon through a handshake. Like his father, he inherits the position as God in his motherless world, which I cannot be sure does not overlap with my world. As much as Hanley lays out the vivid details of his father's relationship with him, in his heart, father remains a hero. This reminds me of the ending of 1984, the sincerity of which I can no longer doubt:
"He loved Big Brother."
