The MPAA rated Frailty R for violence, but that’s actually not the real reason. Sure, there’s a good deal of violence in Frailty, but the camera never shows it. If the film held nothing objectionable other than the violence, it would have been PG-13. The real reason for its R rating is something much deeper, and much more disturbing. The MPAA is aware that teenage kids go out to see movies without their parents knowing. And the last thing that the MPAA wants is for a group of teenage girls saying, “Oh, let’s go see Frailty, Matthew McConaughey is so cute,” and then walking into this.

Frailty is basically about a man (Bill Paxton) who has a vision wherein God tells him that there are demons on Earth disguised as humans – and God commands him to destroy them. He receives a list of names from God, tracks down the people, kidnaps them, then executes and buries them in his backyard. This is disturbing enough in itself, but the whole time he is doing it in front of his two pre-teen sons, Fenton (Matthew O’Leary) and Adam (Jeremy Sumpter), and teaching them to do as he does. We watch in horror the boys watching in horror their father beheading people with an axe. We don’t need to see the actual beheadings. It’s far more unsettling to watch the boys watch the beheadings.

All of this is disturbing enough, but Bill Paxton does a great job of making it all the more terrifying. Paxton as the director makes sure all the scenes are hauntingly dark and crisp and Paxton as the lead actor remains unsettlingly calm as he talks to his boys about how important it is that they do God’s will by destroying all these people. Adam is quickly convinced and gets excited about the idea of kidnapping and killing people. Fenton, on the other hand, never buys into the idea and fights against his father. Matthew McConaughey plays one of the boys as an adult, confessing everything he knows to a police officer.

Frailty appears to be, at first, something that will be a serious intellectual thriller. But the film never takes the ideas anywhere and the ending solidifies the fact that this is just a clever idea for another mystery-thriller that furthers the popular notion that dreams, visions and religion are synonymous with insanity and fanaticism. On the other hand, Frailty does raise some interesting questions. Would we do what Abraham did when commanded by God to kill his son? Frailty convinces us that both Yes and No would be wrong answers.

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