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Eric LaRue

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Bret Eckelberry
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Movie Review

Eric LaRue brought a shotgun and handgun to school, ended three of his classmates’ lives and shattered countless more in the process.

In the aftermath, Eric’s mother, Janice, finds herself living in a depressive haze. She’s haunted by the specter of her son’s violence, struggling to reconcile the innocent boy that he once was with the killer he’s become. What’s more, people blame her for the murders that Eric committed. Wherever she goes, she feels the weight of judgement pressing upon her—a crushing burden.

Meanwhile, her husband, Ron, is learning to let go of his burdens. He’s become involved with a local charismatic Christian church. He attends prayer meetings and goes to worship services. He’s started reading the Bible. In the wake of his son’s evil deeds, Ron has laid his guilt and pain at the feet of Jesus.

And he wants Janice to do the same.

She’s hesitant, to say the least. First, she’s a member of the local Presbyterian church. It’s one of the few places she can find some sort of solace. Not so much in the faith itself, but in counseling sessions with the church’s pastor, Steve. And second, her burden, as weighty and terrible as it is, may not be something she’d so willing surrender, even if she could.

The disconnect only grows when Pastor Steve offers to arrange a meeting between Janice and the mothers whose sons were killed by Eric. He wants to clear the air, to “not let the wound become infected.”

Janice isn’t sure that’s a good idea, despite Steve’s insistence. Ron knows it’s not a good idea—at least, not at her church. His pastor had a similar idea for a sit-down, and Ron is convinced that Janice should attend the meeting there instead …


Positive Elements

Pastor Steve is a very gentle person—maybe too gentle in some respects—but he offers a listening ear for Janice as she processes her grief. One of the mothers of Eric’s victims is earnestly trying to forgive Janice and her family for the death of her son. Ron finds hope and healing through his church community.

Someone expresses genuine remorse for his terrible deeds, saying, “No person should take another person’s life.”

Spiritual Elements

Christianity—or at least some of its denominational expressions—factors heavily into this film’s story. As stated above, Janice and Ron go on separate paths in the wake of Eric’s murders, represented in part by the two rival Christian denominations that they attend. Neither are presented in a particularly flattering light.

Pastor Steve, who heads a Presbyterian church, provides Janice with meek and muddled counsel, but nothing in the way of actual spiritual guidance. He is presented as well-meaning, but ineffectual. On the other end of the spectrum, Pastor Bill, the head of the charismatic Redeemer church which Ron attends, has the air of a televangelist. He’s slick and confident and quick to dispense spiritual advice couched in scriptural platitudes.

But the advice itself is questionable, at best. In one instance, he cobbles together a couple of verses from 1 Timothy 2:11-12 and 3:4-5 to make a point about how Janice should submit to Ron’s authority—though when read in the biblical context, that’s not what those verses are speaking to. The first verse is about teaching and instruction within the Church, while the second concerns the qualifications for church overseers and specifically references children, not wives. Given that these verses are not contiguous and that the more readily applicable verses calling wives to submit to their husbands (and for husbands to love their wives) in Ephesians 5 are ignored, this feels less like a misreading and more like an intentional choice.

In one scene, Ron envisions Jesus sitting across from him in a restaurant booth, looking recently crucified: We see his bare, bruised torso and wounds on His head, as well as in His hands and side. Later, Ron describes the relief that Jesus brings as receiving an endless cup of water while stranded in the desert. He tells Janice that Eric should ask God for forgiveness so he can go to heaven when he dies. (Crucially, Ron shows no interest in visiting Eric in prison and evangelizing his son himself.) Frustrated with her husband’s insistence that Jesus was with Eric even when he killed his classmates, Janice blurts out, “Jesus is everywhere!”

It should be noted that while Ron finds comfort and joy in his personal relationship with Jesus, he also is portrayed as something of a simpleton. He’s very impressionable and easily manipulated—especially by Lisa, another wide-eyed congregant with whom he has a questionable relationship (more on that later). These things layer his religious experience with a darker, cynical undercurrent. In fact, every scene in his church is shot in shadowy rooms, adding an sinister feel to those encounters. In contrast, Janice’s church is light but vapid.

Janice is skeptical of prayer. Ron thumbs through a Bible. Women wear cross necklaces. We see a cross hanging on a wall. Someone talks about feeling “the Spirit of the Lord.” A woman speaks in tongues during a worship service. Someone talks about the laying on of hands and anointing oil. Another person claims, “Through trial you achieve grace” and says that he is “Jesus crazy.” A man is chastised for viewing Christ like “[his] bodyguard.”

Sexual & Romantic Content

Ron attends Redeemer with Lisa, a married coworker, who drives him to and from the church. But the two clearly have a mutual attraction. They share a few lingering hugs and moments laced with sexual tension. It all culminates in a scene where Lisa quotes a part of 2 Corinthians 12:9 suggestively into Ron’s ear: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'” (ESV).

Ron is clearly aroused, but hurries away before they go any further. Still, the movie lingers with him in the immediate aftermath, as he covers the evidence of his arousal with a Bible and hurries to a bathroom.

Ron recounts a fishing trip with Eric where he had planned to give his son “The Talk.” (He grew too nervous and didn’t go through with it.) Early in the film, he offers to give Janice a neck massage; later, we learn that he’s made the same offer to other women as well. Pastor Steve is divorced.

Violent Content

Eric’s murder of three of his classmates overshadows and influences the events of the entire film. We don’t see that violent deed, but we hear about it in progressively more graphic detail as the movie rolls on.

A woman slashes a man’s face with a clothes hanger. Janice recounts a time when Eric got leeches from swimming in a lake. Someone talks about the number of stabbings that occur in a prison. A woman says she once stepped on a used sparkler during the Fourth of July. Another person discusses her son’s burst appendix. A stained-glass window features a character holding a dagger to his wrist. Decorative skulls are seen in an aquarium tank.

Crude or Profane Language

Four uses of the f-word. God’s name is paired with “d—” twice. We hear “h—” used two times, along with one use each of “a–hole” and “crap.”

Drug & Alcohol Content

Janice smokes cigarettes often throughout Eric LaRue. A man vapes. We see people with beers at a restaurant bar. Underage kids discuss getting beer. Someone mentions drug rehab.

Other Noteworthy Elements

A man approaches Janice at her general store job to ask for her recommendation on which gun to buy. Though she’s clearly upset by the request, the man continues to act suspiciously and to press her until she loses her composure. (We find out it was a cruel joke.)

Pastor Steve, for all his good intentions, pushes Janice and the mothers of Eric’s victims into an unwanted meeting. He frames it as a way to heal the wounds caused by Eric’s actions, but it soon starts to feel more like he’s picking at a scab than helping wounds to heal. Mothers process their grief and anger. It is revealed that Eric was an outcast at school and was bullied by some of his classmates. When Janice says she tried to help Eric through his difficulties, another woman bluntly replies, “You didn’t try hard enough.”

Someone tries to justify Eric’s murders. A man talks about getting food poisoning. An employer is annoyed by a coworker’s pregnancy and another’s health issues. Friedrich Nietzsche is quoted. A married couple argues frequently and struggles to communicate in any meaningful way.

Conclusion

Visualize, if you will, the act of storytelling as building a house. You have a collection plot points, character beats, visual cues—your brick and mortar—that fit together and build on each other. Stack enough of those bricks and you’ll have a house … er, story … to show for it. Do a good job, and your story will feel nice and complete, like a well-built home.

To conclude my tortured analogy, Eric LaRue feels less like a house and more like a pile of bricks.

There are some interesting building blocks here, to be sure. Exploring the grief and isolation that results from a child’s monstrous actions could have been poignant. So, too, could have been an examination of the role that communities of faith can play as they strive to help (or hinder) healing after such a tragedy. But these concepts are half-baked and buried within a pile of disconnected messages, off-putting character interactions and unfulfilled foreshadowing.

Beyond simple story construction, families will want to be aware of the heaviness of this film’s subject matter—a school shooting—and its constant side-eying of the Christian faith. The story presents people of faith as awkward and ineffectual at best, and manipulative at worst. Add to that some limited (but harsh) bouts of language and strange, suggestive elements, and this is a movie that families will likely want to avoid.

In the end, Eric LaRue is a film that thinks it has a lot to say but doesn’t end up saying much at all.


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Bret Eckelberry

Bret loves a good story—be it a movie, show, or video game—and enjoys geeking out about things like plot and story structure. He has a blast reading and writing fiction and has penned several short stories and screenplays. He and his wife love to kayak the many beautiful Colorado lakes with their dog.