Before the camera shows us the sad, disconnected life of Judy Greer’s Janice Larue, we discover that her son Eric (Nation Sage Henrikson) murdered three of his classmates at school. The audience won’t actually meet Eric until the film is nearly over, but in Brett Neveu’s adaptation of his own play, that isn’t really the point. Instead, it’s about how Eric’s decisions impact the lives of his mother, his father Ron (Alexander Skarsgard), and the small, fractured community around them. In a film that’s not about religion but is about religion (more on that later), two of the community’s churches also become hotspots for the fallout after the violence.
Eric Larue is excellently acted, artfully displayed, and incredibly powerful. It’s also a film that I couldn’t imagine watching ever again, like a mashup of First Reformed, Mass, and Beautiful Boy. It’s so heart wrenching, and yet, as a pastor, it serves as a warning of what NOT to do when people are facing a tragedy like this.
On one side of the religious involvement is a Presbyterian, Steve Calhan (Paul Sparks), who has a heart of gold but doesn’t ever seem like he’s really confident in his role as theological shepherd. On the other side is the Pentecostal fundamentalist Verne (Tracy Letts), whose role as pastor is dwarfed by the manipulative Jesus-speak of Lisa (Alison Pill), who works with Ron and tells him about the plan for him that God told her about. From where I am sitting, these are two typical – and unhelpful – options that people too often find in church communities. Let me explain.
Calhan is a nice guy, who means well, and aggressively pursues Janice, wanting to get her to meet with the mothers of the shooting victims. While Calhan has ‘lost’ her son, she’s not actually in the same situation as the other three women. They know it; she knows it. Calhan doesn’t get it. Calhan finally gathers the women together and then doesn’t know what to do with the impact of their collision. ONE WOMAN’S SON KILLED THE SONS OF THREE OTHER WOMEN! They’re not on the same playing field, and their interaction highlights their inequality. Calhan isn’t a counselor – and like too many pastors I know – he tries to play at one in a situation where he is way over his head. Worse still, he wants to lead a conversation with them, but he doesn’t actually stick to what he should be a resident expert in – things of faith. (Just for the record, I am not a fan of making everything Scriptural just for Scripture’s sake, but Calhan could really lead from a spiritual place, and instead he leads from a self-help pseudo-spiritual “how does this make you feel?” position that he doesn’t truly understand. Calhan isn’t a bad guy, but I wouldn’t want him as a pastor.
On the other hand, Verne is NOT a nice guy, and … I wouldn’t want him as my pastor. He quotes Scripture out of context to tell Ron that he should get his house in order, meaning that he should get his wife to do what Verne wants her to do. (Ironically, I wonder how much Ron’s house is understood to be in order by churches of this ilk after his son uses violence to end three young men’s lives.) Ron also quotes something he learned in church – “trial provides you with grace” – that made my head want to explode. Grace is a free gift of God because of God’s love, but this church preaches that grace is something earned. That’s the opposite of what grace means!
Ron is manipulated by his coworker and by Verne, largely because he wants to ignore Eric and let the church bear the responsibility of “saving” him. He wants to get back to his weirdly creepy back rubs and the women he’d get close to that way, even as the church seems okay with his womanizing side. From their perspective, it’s all about getting Janice in the door – as if that would give them some kind of power. Does either church think they would be justified in their existence if they could somehow talk through, pray over, or anoint away the hurt that Eric’s decision has caused?
In the end of the film, I am left with the combined emphasis in church and out of church on the question, “Why?” It’s really a problem of evil question – “why do bad things happen to good people?” That’s pretty basic, but in the close-ups of Greer’s face (which make her seem like the most sane person in the film), we see the tortured way that she wrestles with what her child did. It’s in the conversation that she has with Eric, and the situations where she asks questions of others, trying to find out his motivation or the rationale for what he did. It’s in the conflict between Ron and Janice – one longing to just move on and other seeking to understand.
Director Michael Shannon has crafted a fundamentally challenging examination of the questions at hand, supported by fantastic acting, and Neveu’s source material. It’s not fun, and it will challenge you, because if we’re honest, we know that the question of evil hangs over us, daring us to really ask it and wrestling with God over the answers.
Eric Larue is available in theatres on Friday, April 4th, 2025.
