Frailty

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Andrea Yates believed she was possessed by Satan and could save her children by drowning them. Frailty is as chilling.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Paxton's Dad may be the most terrifying father to appear in a horror film since Jack Nicholson went crazily homicidal in "The Shining."

Variety Robert Koehler

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.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Genuinely creepy Southern Gothic thriller that once again proves that in horror movies, sometimes less is actually more.

Chicago Reader Hank Sartin

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.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

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.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The film becomes cumulatively stranger as it goes along, and it has a lulu of a kicker.

Film Threat Clint Morris

So immodestly unripe; yet so horrendously tempting you’ll find it hard to resist.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

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.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Somber and violent but undeniably stylish and unsettling thriller.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It's the cinematic equivalent of a good page-turner, and even if it's nonsense, its claws dig surprisingly deep.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Blood-curdling stuff.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Against all odds in heaven and hell, it creeped me out just fine.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

May leave you more cold and stunned than enlightened.

Slate David Edelstein

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.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Chills to the bone -- and beyond, but for pure excitement it's best not to look far beneath the surface.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

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.

USA Today Mike Clark

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.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

As disappointing as the wrap-up is, it can't erase the chilling psychological warfare that represents the majority of what precedes it.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

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.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

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.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Paxton is impressively subtle and elicits remarkable performances from O'Leary and Sumpter.

Boston Globe Sam Allis

Murder should either be unsparingly real or kitschy like the ''Texas Chainsaw Massacre.'' This is neither.

New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky

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.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

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.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

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.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Gory but lifeless.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

This is a guy movie, a gothic creepshow.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

When the twists arrive, they feel like much of the film: creepy and cliché-free, but still terribly wrong.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

Dumb but also unrelentingly dark and ugly, thereby depriving the viewer of any camp value.