The ``horror-pleasure'' principle Dan refers to is something that struck me
in the new, soon-to-be-released Bill Paxton film, ``Frailty.'' I observed in
my review that the film, depicting a father dirven by an Old Testament
fervor to be God's avenging angel on Earth and--with his two sons in
tow--slay those deemed to posess the Devil, refuses to provide the viewer
with the genre's standard outlets for enjoying the gore, or at least,
enjoying the killers. (Hannibal being the gold standard in this department.)
Paxton's killer dad is unadorned, neither gleefully nasty nor zonked out of
his mind, and certainly not Jack (``The Shining'') Torrance in redux. He
simply goes about his ``divine'' duties. The movie provides the perspective
of his horrified older son (Matt O'Leary, in the best child performance
since Haley Joel Osment in ``The Sixth Sense''), as a kind of moral
counterpoint, yet even this is undermined in the end. If ``Frailty'' can be
viewed as a horror film, then it's one that deliberately denies the audience
the secret pleasure of being a co-conspirator with the killer. In the
slasher sub-genre of horror, this pleasure has always been one of the
confidences that these movies have shared with the audience. With this
pleasure taken away, ``Frailty'' becomes a fascinating study in
reconsidering what we've been watching on screen in these movies for many
years.
Robert Koehler
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