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This week on The Rotten Horror Picture Show, Amanda and Clay travel back in time to a very interesting era of thriller movies, the early 2000’s! We dug this diamond in the rough right out of the roughest place on earth, the cheap DVD table at Costco. That’s right, we’re covering the Bill Paxton/Matthew McConaughey “oh yeah that movie” classic: Frailty!
One day, a widowed blue-collar worker has a revelation: he must destroy those revealed to him as demons. He then begins the serial killings of `God’s Hand Killer’ across Texas, but he also has two young sons, the younger of whom idolize him and believes in the cause, while his older brother is revolted but cannot bring himself to stop his father. Twenty years later, the elder son walks into a police station and confesses. Twists and turns abound as this story of a father just trying to keep his family together descend into a tale of murder, brainwashing, and supernatural trauma. It’s a true family film!
Join Clay and Amanda as they sharpen their blade on Deus ex bowling trophy (and engine block), the ninja turtles murder van, proof that the family that slays together stays together, a head-sized window into total insanity, an ax named Otis, and of course, enough questionable parenting to fill a backyard murder shed!
Frailty, along with a few other thrillers of the same era, occupies this interesting place in movie history, a post Se7en era where small thrillers with twist endings could sneak under the radar and be surprising to the audiences lucky enough to see them, but were also relatively forgettable. That’s not to say they were bad, because Frailty definitely isn’t, but it does come from a now seemingly bygone era where mid-level thrillers/horror could catch you off guard when you chose them randomly for your night out to the movies.
So make your list of demons, check it twice, gas up your murder van, and dig a burial plot in the rose garden with us …if you DARE!