The opening scene of Bill "Game over man! Game over!" Paxton's directorial debut makes sure it has its talons in you good and proper. An FBI agent (Powers Boothe!) is called to his office in the middle of the night because there's a young man (McConaughey) there who knows the identity of the serial killer he's been hunting. He knows them pretty well, too: it's his brother. Most of the film is then told in flashback as the young man narrates his tumultuous childhood growing up with a father (Paxton again) who was as nuttier than a KP factory, and an extremely impressionable little brother (who is clearly crazy; he'd prefer to see Meatballs over the Warriors?!). Whenever McConaughey's on screen he has an eerie calm about him, and his southern drawl is perfect for the sun-baked horror of his recollections. Frailty didn't bother the Academy in the same way that our hero's recent films have, understandably: save for a few neat flourishes (a Brazil-esque hallucination of an angel by the mad dad; creepy use of children's Christian claymation series Davy and Goliath; a camera hovering over an ad-hoc burial ala The Evil Dead), Paxton's direction is pretty pedestrian, and there's more than a few unintentionally hilarious lines as dad and sons alike give into homicidal religious fervour, plus the premise is pretty out there. It's a neat little horror flick, though, with some above-average child acting (the kid playing young McConaughey mastered his contemplative squint), and a creepy premise that earned it praise from no less authorities on the genre than Stephen King, Sam Raimi and James Cameron. No doubt McConaughey's electric performance helped.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
