Frailty is an imaginative semi-supernatural thriller that pushes genre boundaries and tells a great, albeit depressing, story.
A father (Bill Paxton) has just received word from god to carry out its mission: killing the demons that walk among us. He recruits his two children, Adam (Jeremy Sumpter) and Fenton Meiks (Matthew O'Leary) to carry out the serial killings, one of whom believes in what he does, and the other requires special persuasion to understand his purpose in life.
The movie is told as a flashback, with the children grown and the whereabouts of the father revealed by one of the children to FBI agent Wesley Doyle (Powers Boothe), who is in charge of a case involving a second series of killings that bear some semblance to the first. The son convinces the agent to go along with him, but there are twists in store for Doyle (and the audience).
The intentions of Director (also Paxton) are fairly clear as to whether or not Adam and his father were imagining everything, or if they really received word from a god to do its work. First, there's the knowledge Adam has about the FBI agent killing his mother (which is confirmed by the agents words when confronted); then there's the loss of memory by the agent who saw Adam and Doyle converse; finally, there's the glitch on the video tape that should've captured Adam's face. All these point to some sort of a supernatural intervention.
The cinematography is excellent and the pacing is just right. All the actors involved do an amazing job. In particular, the child actors, Matthew O'Leary and Jeremy Sumpter, stand out --- their performances were excellent. Frailty is a disturbing and sad movie that's definitely worth checking out.