The story follows an FBI investigation in present day Texas. Fenton Meiks (Matthew McConaughey), a young man, approaches the lead FBI investigator (Powers Boothe), claiming he knows the identity of a serial killer who calls himself “God’s Hands.” The FBI agent is curious, but unimpressed until Fenton reveals that the killer is his younger brother Adam. Fenton recounts in a series of flashbacks, how he and his brother grew up in a very loving family, raised by their widowed father (Bill Paxton). All that changed, the day his father awoke, believing he had been visited by an angel and given a mission to destroy “demons” – seemingly normal looking people, who walked this earth as pure evil. Fenton’s father, and then his brother Adam, swore to carry out this ‘divine’ mission. Fenton refused to participate in the killings. Out of loyalty however, he refused to go to the police, until now. The FBI agent follows Fenton to the family’s rose garden only to be surprised that neither evil nor innocence is what it seems.
First and foremost Bill Paxton makes this film. He is so good at playing the kindly, homicidal father that you cannot see past his demeanor, until he wields that axe of his. The tension and unnerving existence makes this movie all the more frightening.
The beauty also lies in what isn’t shown. We are lead to believe all these horrific things have happened without force-feeding us the horrors. It’s that sense of terror that seems to spook me more than a head rolling down some stairs or an arm getting lopped off by some madman. The unknown is scary if the outer workings are all in their places. Frailty has its guts in order and that makes it frightening.
+ charlie craine
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