Get ready for a heart-wrenching and thought-provoking film that will leave you speechless. Premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival’s Spotlight Narrative category, Eric Larue is a powerful and devastating account of the aftermath of a school shooting. But instead of focusing on the shooter, the film delves into the lives of the parents of the boy who committed the heinous act.
Adapted by Brett Neveu from his own 2002 stage play, Eric Larue has taken on new weight in the two decades since it was first presented at Chicago’s Red Orchid Theatre. With the seemingly endless numbers of school shootings and the fact that gun violence is now the number one cause of death for young people, this film is more relevant than ever.
For his feature film directorial debut, actor Michael Shannon was most interested in exploring the effects of this traumatic life-changing incident from the point of view of the parents, particularly the pair of the young teen who murdered three of his classmates. In a stunning turn, Judy Greer plays Janice Larue, devastated by this event that has put her son away for life and caused a deep and aching rift in her marriage to husband Ron Larue (an excellent Alexander Skarsgard).
There is clear confusion and a loss at how to deal with all this evident on the part of both parents. In this case, both are split by religious choices, a way to use, or try to resurrect, whatever faith they had, or have left, in turning to God. Ron becomes essentially a born-again disciple of Jesus in the Redeemer Church run by Bill Verne (Tracy Letts), urged on by an attractive and enthusiastic fellow parishioner, Lisa Graff (Alison Pill). Meanwhile, Janice is still deep in grief and returns to work in her hardware store where the trauma of what she has been through clearly shows she is not ready to deal with the public.
The film gets its power from the fact that we know these kinds of conversations are sadly going on more frequently than ever in a country in love with its guns and where the killing of kids in schools is the new normal. Eric, however, does not fit the profile of most of these shooters, and that is also what gives this such a feeling of senseless loss, not just for those who died, or Eric whose life is destroyed, but also the families who become collateral damage, unable to understand what happened to their lives in the span of just a few moments.
This is a very promising directorial debut by Shannon, whose own stellar acting chops seem to have helped him bring out sensational performances all around, including Greer’s in the kind of role this veteran actress, known mostly for comedy, has ever been given before. Skarsgard also gets a refreshing change of pace here as well as the father and husband whose almost cultish embrace of a new religion is just cover for his own inability to deal with his new reality.
Eric Larue is a unique and powerful film that will stand on its own. Don’t miss it.
