THE STORY – Janice is struggling in the aftermath of a shocking crime at the hands of her son. She and her husband seek solace in rival religious congregations.
THE CAST – Judy Greer, Paul Sparks, Alison Pill, Tracy Letts, Annie Parisse & Alexander Skarsgård
THE TEAM – Michael Shannon (Director) & Brett Neveu (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 119 Minutes
There’s a famous t-shirt aimed directly at film nerds that says, “Judy Greer should’ve been the lead.” I’m not sure if Michael Shannon saw someone wearing that shirt while walking the streets of Chicago, or like many of us, he’s been impressed with her talents for years and wanted to give her an opportunity worthy of her abilities. Either way, Shannon made the right decision in choosing her to play Janice, the troubled, grieving mother at the center of his directorial debut. Unfortunately, she’s the best thing about the film by a significant margin. Brett Neveu’s screenplay presents a difficult task to the actors as it’s a tonal mess, and no one involved seems to know how best to tame it. Greer is mostly successful in rising above the writing’s shortcomings, but she’s alone in being able to make the screenplay feel anything but awkward.
Janice is in mourning for her son, Eric; however, he’s very much alive but confined to a maximum security prison. As we learn through context clues, Eric procured a pair of guns, brought them to his high school, and killed three of his fellow students. This violent tragedy has put a strain on the relationship between Janice and her husband, Ron (Alexander Skarsgård). Specifically, Ron has started to lean hard into religion as a coping mechanism, whereas Janice has increasingly retreated into herself, taking a leave from her retail job and generally avoiding people.
Shannon’s film primarily focuses on Janice as she slowly attempts to reenter the world. She starts working again and, begrudgingly, begins seeing a local pastor named Steve (Paul Sparks), who wants to have Janice meet with the three mothers of the slain children to obtain some sort of group healing or absolution. Janice trudges through her days, approaching situations with the energy of someone doing what they think they should rather than what they want to be doing – and Greer is extraordinary in her portrayal. It would be easy for the character to feel monotonous, especially given the screenplay’s repetitive nature; she and her husband have a habit of getting into the same arguments multiple times throughout the film, which isn’t necessarily unrealistic but does feel dramatically tiring. Greer finds a shocking amount of variation in her character’s actions and reactions. During one of the many fights between her and Skarsgård, where she clearly wants her husband to say something different than the regurgitated Jesus-focused platitudes he’s become fond of, Greer adopts a heart-stopping expression of desperate, silent longing that says much more about their relationship than any of the couple’s dialogue. The film is filled with similar moments of unbelievably expressive acting from Greer. She even manages to make the climactic conversation between herself and her on-screen son work, conveyed through Janice’s dialogue, despite the odd conclusions that the screenplay presents at this point.
Neveu intends to tell a difficult story filled with challenging ideas; it wants to be the type of film that will force viewers to have revelatory post-film conversations about the topics it presents. But it’s more likely to inspire discussions about the shortcomings of the movie itself. Most notably, the characters habitually blur out every intrusive thought that passes through their minds. Sometimes, this is used for comedic purposes, such as with Janice’s tactless co-workers. But confusingly, this is also presented as a quirk of Ron’s that’s supposed to set him apart from the other characters. In particular, he has a penchant for offering people neck massages in moments of distress. This peculiar character trait would more effectively show how lost and disoriented Ron is if everyone else in town didn’t have similar off-putting conversational tendencies.
Shannon doesn’t help this tonal perplexity with his strange pacing. The film is generally deliberate in this respect, appropriately mirroring Janice’s depression. At its best, the cold cinematography, patient editing, and Jonathan Mastro’s sparse, spooky score work in harmony to efficiently emphasize the intended haunted tone. Some of the instances of comedic relief (if that’s actually what they’re supposed to be) are spliced up in a way that’s dizzying and distracting; however, it’s hard to blame Shannon when the screenplay is such a mess of conflicting moods and bursts of bizarreness.
Although Greer miraculously finds a way to navigate through it, the rest of the cast is largely unsuccessful at conquering the screenplay’s difficulties. One exception is Annie Parisse, who plays Stephanie, the mother of one of the victims. She’s firmly entrenched in the “anger” part of the Kübler-Ross model, and Parisse fully gives into this painful energy. Although she’s undoubtedly a sympathetic character, Parisse doesn’t shy away from emphasizing the nastiness of the things Stephanie says to Janice. She gives a perfect depiction of the fury that’s entirely justified but still hard to watch. And Sparks plays the well-meaning but obnoxious pastor with a realistically dopey energy, but he’s unable to overcome the frustratingly clueless way he’s written. Skarsgård and Alison Pill (who plays Lisa, a loyal churchgoer) – both typically reliable actors – struggle to find the humanity in the passionate evangelicals they portray. They’re unable to push through the screenplay’s surface-level, borderline parody characterizations.
In the way it approaches hot-button topics and painful conversations, Shannon’s debut feature attempts to take la rue less traveled with a story built around a surprising subject – the complicated mother of a school shooter. But “Eric LaRue” doesn’t have the grace or profundity required to make it through the labyrinth of tricky ideas that it wishes to traverse. And it’s the actors who most take on this unenviable burden of a screenplay, and nearly all crumble under its weight – all except the supremely talented Judy Greer.
