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Frailty
Metascore
64 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 32 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 20 out of 32
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 32
  3. Negative: 2 out of 32
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  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    100
    Andrea Yates believed she was possessed by Satan and could save her children by drowning them. Frailty is as chilling.
  2. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    90
    Paxton's Dad may be the most terrifying father to appear in a horror film since Jack Nicholson went crazily homicidal in "The Shining."
  3. Variety
    Reviewed by: Robert Koehler
    90
    A resoundingly old-fashioned and well crafted study of evil infecting an American family, Frailty moves from strength to strength on its deceptive narrative course.
  4. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    88
    Genuinely creepy Southern Gothic thriller that once again proves that in horror movies, sometimes less is actually more.
  5. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Clint Morris
    80
    So immodestly unripe; yet so horrendously tempting you’ll find it hard to resist.
  6. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    80
    The film becomes cumulatively stranger as it goes along, and it has a lulu of a kicker.
  7. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Michael Atkinson
    80
    It's a small, unassuming movie grasping at whole-hog homo psychopathicus, with its feet planted squarely in Texan grave dirt and its head lost in the ether of Christian derangement.
  8. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    80
    Well-crafted, disturbing Texas gothic thriller, a completely spooky piece of business that gets under your skin and, some plot blips aside, stays there for the duration.
  9. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Hank Sartin
    80
    It's good old-fashioned rural gothic that would make Flannery O'Connor proud, with tricky switcheroos that keep shaking up our assumptions about what's going on.
  10. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    75
    It's the cinematic equivalent of a good page-turner, and even if it's nonsense, its claws dig surprisingly deep.
  11. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    75
    Blood-curdling stuff.
  12. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    75
    You'll depart with memories of a well-crafted study in quiet horror, and with ideas whirling in your head about the nature of evil and what happens to children caught in its grip.
  13. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    75
    Against all odds in heaven and hell, it creeped me out just fine.
  14. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    75
    Somber and violent but undeniably stylish and unsettling thriller.
  15. Slate
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    70
    You have to give credit to Frailty for jiggering up the formula a bit, so that what starts as an ominously low-key study of a boy coming of age with a mad father escalates into a combination of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Breaking the Waves" -- Grand Guignol religiosity.
  16. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    70
    May leave you more cold and stunned than enlightened.
  17. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    67
    Chills to the bone -- and beyond, but for pure excitement it's best not to look far beneath the surface.
  18. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    63
    Most of Frailty is so good -- done in a low-key, realistic mood of genuine creepiness and dread -- that it doesn't need formula shocks.
  19. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Mike Clark
    63
    The payoff isn't worth the time invested, but at least the actor-turned-filmmaker underplays an inherently queasy project that could have been over the top.
  20. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    63
    As disappointing as the wrap-up is, it can't erase the chilling psychological warfare that represents the majority of what precedes it.
  21. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    60
    Paxton is impressively subtle and elicits remarkable performances from O'Leary and Sumpter.
  22. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    60
    Starts out, and ends up, as a thriller trying valiantly to show us layers of moral depth. But in between that beginning and ending, Paxton's vision (as well as that of Brent Hanley, who wrote the script) becomes wavy and indistinct, a blurry muddle of sensationalistic, prurient grisliness masquerading as a meditation on the nature of evil.
  23. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Chuck Wilson
    60
    Audiences are destined to debate the film's final scenes, where Hanley piles on plot twists, leading to a coda that turns a creepily ambiguous story about God and the terrifying power of paternal love into something closer to an X-File.
  24. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    50
    There's a good little psychological thriller buried underneath all the manufactured shocks, in the story of a powerless child standing alone against a parent's mental illness.
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  25. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Sam Allis
    50
    Murder should either be unsparingly real or kitschy like the ''Texas Chainsaw Massacre.'' This is neither.
  26. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    50
    This is a guy movie, a gothic creepshow.
  27. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    50
    Gory but lifeless.
  28. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Kim Morgan
    50
    The story sounds horrifying, but the film takes some unfortunate twists and never presents us with a multifaceted character in Paxton. Paxton just doesn't play the nice-but-nuts role with a modicum of terror.
  29. New Times (L.A.)
    Reviewed by: Robert Wilonsky
    50
    Like so many other allegedly scary movies, it gets so tangled up in The Twist that it chokes the energy right out of the very audience it seeks to frighten.
  30. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    40
    When the twists arrive, they feel like much of the film: creepy and cliché-free, but still terribly wrong.
  31. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Stephen Hunter
    30
    The movie is so disturbing that it seems nearly blasphemous. I wouldn't wish it on an anthrax spore. After all, anthrax has feelings, too.
  32. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Carla Meyer
    0
    Dumb but also unrelentingly dark and ugly, thereby depriving the viewer of any camp value.
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User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
6.6 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 45 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 22 out of 34
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 34
  3. Negative: 6 out of 34
  1. cabrita
    9
    A film that is like many other crime dramas but with a dark scary twist to it. Every scene in this film is important. The film flows very smoothly and the shocking finish fits perfectly with the past events that have already occured in the film. Unlike many other films this ending was necessary for the story and it's themes. The question i'm still pondering at the end of the film is if Adam Meekes is a hero or if Fenton was right. The film does lean towards one side but there is still room for Fenton's perspective.… Full Review »
  2. DHE
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view. A bait-and-switch contrivance of the worst kind. (Is there a good kind?) The creepy religious weirdness that characterized the bulk of the movie was an accurate - and disturbing - cautionary tale about how faith and belief untethered to objective reality morphs seamlessly into bat-**** crazy. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people like those depicted in the film (some of them are currently running for president), so the apparent message of the film would have seemed to be: watch out for nut-jobs masquerading as good God-fearing people. I say apparent because this prevailing theme gives way in the end to its opposite. Namely, no matter how crazy you thought these people were, you were wrong: they were actually doing God's handiwork. Really. So I guess regardless of how irrational people might seem, who knows, they may just be taking orders from God. This is not a plot twist; it's a plot reversal. Or a sick joke. If you're truly religious, I don't see how you could make it through most of this movie. If you're not, you'll be thoroughly disgusted with the ending. If you're neither, maybe this is the movie for you.… Full Review »
  3. joe_mcfarlane
    7
    This is a good film.. i thought that the plot was well thought out and it's a very interesting film to watch. the ending is very clever and i liked this film a lot. whilst the film's plot twist is obvious from the beginning it's still very gripping… Full Review »
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