What I Liked: What an incredible story. It goes like this: in 1979 Texas a single
father (Bill Paxton (The Terminator,
Predator 2)) is raising two prepubescent boys (Matt O’Leary (Live Free or Die Hard) and Jeremy
Sumpter (Soul Surfer)) and everything
seems hunky dory. The boys go to school
and help out around the house while the father works to support the
family. You know, they love each other ‘n
shit.
Then all of a sudden the father wakes the boys up in the
middle of the night and tells them that an angel spoke to him and the end of
the world is coming. The angel gave him
and his sons the task of destroying demons; who, how and when would be outlined
later. Over the next couple of weeks the
father has more visions and collects the materials needed to slay the evil and
the names of who must go. He explains
that on the outside the demons will look like regular people but they really
aren’t. He also says that when you touch
these so called “people” you will be able to see what sinister acts they had
committed.
So the father kidnaps folks and kills them in front of his
kids all the while believing that he’s doing God’s work. He even says that he’s never hurt a human in
his life, he’s only destroyed demons. The
older son doesn’t believe this and is terrified of the man that he loves but is
too scared to do anything about it. The
younger son is still young enough that he admires his father and has full faith
that he’s telling the truth about the demons and what must be done to them.
This is one heavy fuckin’ plot and I absolutely love the truly
horrific ideas it lays down. Plus it
doesn’t let up. There’s almost no filler
here with so much goddamn tension throughout.
What I Didn’t Like: The cinematography is very plain. It’s serviceable but unexciting.
The acting is fine but nothing that great either. Sometimes the delivery of the deranged
dialogue can border on being a little silly even.
The double twist ending wasn’t necessary at all. Actually I don’t like how the entire movie
was structured with one of the sons telling his story to an FBI agent in modern
day. Emotions and thoughts are explained
through narration that the audience would’ve picked up on by itself. They should’ve jettisoned the hopping back
and forth bullshit and had the whole thing take place in 1979.
Overall Impression: Truth be told I only checked this out
because it was the first movie that Bill Paxton directed (he’s only done one
other) and I expected it to be nothing more than a mere curiosity. But Jesus he picked one helluva script to
shoot his first time out. It was written
by Brent Hanley by the way who essentially hasn’t done anything else. So the reason for the film feeling flat on a
technical level is because of Paxton’s inexperience, even though he had a
strong nose for a great story.
But to be fair this would’ve been a tough picture to make
for anyone I think. You’ve got very dark
subject matter, two little kids in the main roles, a psychotic father that has
to undoubtedly believe in this bat shit crazy prophecy, it’s a period piece and
there are a bunch of gruesome murders with an axe. I mean the psychological aspect alone would
be exceedingly difficult to pull off. Everything
needs to be just right in terms of tone to make it engaging and not depressing
or comical. Unless you have an
exceptional set of filmmakers coming together to make this delicate balancing
act work then I would say this story would probably play better in a book
format.
But anyway, I would recommend this one on the frightening ideas
it presents alone. It’s not the best
movie and I would be hard pressed to call it great even due to the execution certainly
lacking in many areas. But ignoring the
ending and the narration the story is one of the best and craziest I’ve ever
heard.
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