Frailty (2001)

Day 8 of Sobriety.

I had never heard of Frailty until fairly recently when I was reading an interview with horror podcaster and author Scott A. Bradley on the Adventures Underground website. Scott was raised in a fundamentalist Christian doomsday cult (i.e., they believed that the world was going to end imminently), and the interviewer asked him his opinion on which movies about cults were the most authentic. Two that he singled out were Frailty and Martha Marcy May Marlene from 2011. As he is obviously someone who knows what he is talking about, I sought out cheap ex-rental copies of both movies.

I have something of an interest in cults, largely stemming from an interest in cults as depicted in films like Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy, but also real cults, like the Process Church and the Manson Family. Now, I realize that I need to be careful here, because, unlike horror movies, such cults were real, and people were harmed by them, so I am careful to temper my interest and curiosity with an appropriate awareness of and respect for that.

Although Frailty isn’t actually about a cult, it is about religious fervor, and particularly religious fervor that drives people to do very bad things. Scott A. Bradley said that it was the depiction of such fervor in Frailty that affected him so deeply.

Much of the movie is told in flashback, switching between the present day and the 1970s. It is about a family of three—a father and his two young sons, the boys’ mother having died giving birth to the second. Despite that tragedy, the depiction of the family at the outset of the film is of a fairly happy well-adjusted one. The father is kind, hardworking, and conscientious, and the boys are mature and responsible for their young ages, pulling their weight in the household as best they can. Then, one night, the father is convinced that he has been visited by an angel and given a murderous holy mission, after which everything changes.

The plot is quite twisty, with some surprising revelations. This is a film that you really need to concentrate on, so in my fidgety, distracted, newly-sober state, I was reaching for the rewind button a few times. It's not really a horror film per se, more of a psychological thriller, but it does have some truly horrific scenes. Some of which are all the more disturbing because (1) they are perpetrated by normal people (well, not exactly “normal,” but not supernatural monsters either), and (2) several of the most disturbing scenes involve children—either as witnesses or perpetrators.

During a few scenes in the film, I watched with some envy as the father cracked open a beer after coming home from his job as a mechanic. I think the brand was “Hammer.” I wonder if that was a real US beer brand in the 1970s? I’m guessing probably not. In any case my own days of getting “hammered” are hopefully over…