In the wake of a school shooting, a mother reckons with her neighbors in 'Eric LaRue'

As America’s plague of schoolhouse shootings continues unabated, a dependable watercourse of movies has cropped up successful effect to the ongoing tragedy. These films person tally the gamut — sometimes focusing connected the survivors, sometimes connected the shooters, sometimes connected the parents — and likewise their strategies person varied, either promising catharsis, anticipation oregon insight. So possibly it’s fitting that the astir caller summation to this bittersweet subgenre is the numbest. After all, who needs catharsis, anticipation oregon penetration erstwhile these killings support occurring?

Based connected Brett Neveu’s 2002 play, which helium adapted into a script, the brittle play “Eric LaRue” reflects the intense, earnest benignant of its director, Oscar-nominated histrion Michael Shannon, who makes his diagnostic debut down the camera. The movie derives its rubric from the sanction of a teen who decided 1 time to sprout dormant 3 of his classmates, devastating a tiny municipality successful wide and the parents of some the victims and the shooter successful specific.

Shannon, who doesn’t enactment successful the movie, focuses connected 1 parent: Eric’s mother, Janice (Judy Greer), who has lived her beingness since the murders successful a fog. She doesn’t cognize however to enactment and she doesn’t cognize however to feel. It’s a testament to Shannon’s absorption that helium afloat commits to submerging america into Janice’s unimaginable affectional stupor, adjacent erstwhile that gutsy attack yet proves to beryllium the film’s undoing.

Greer leverages her sizeable entreaty to play idiosyncratic who would similar thing much than to beryllium near alone. Smoking a drawstring of cigarettes oregon blankly watching whatever’s connected television, her look a canvas of exhaustion and depression, Janice is struggling to prime up the pieces. Tellingly, the movie ne'er specifies however agelong agone the shooting occurred. All we cognize is that the proceedings is implicit and Eric is successful prison, and that he’s been determination for capable clip that Janice’s ineffectual, awkward pastor Steve (Paul Sparks) is amazed she hasn’t yet visited him yet. “Eric LaRue” lays retired lone the barest of backstories — we larn Eric wasn’t fashionable — but dissimilar a likewise mother-centered drama, “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” the killer’s motivations aren’t meant to beryllium unraveled. Eric murdered those boys and has been sent away. All Janice tin bash present is wonderment what happens next.

Most movies astir schoolhouse shootings, including “Elephant,” “Mass” and “The Fallout,” tackle the shock, sorrow and fearfulness that ripple done communities. But Shannon’s starchy tone, accented by Jonathan Mastro’s mournful score, allows nary country for affectional theatrics oregon pat intelligence breakthroughs. Instead, “Eric LaRue” critiques society’s (and possibly besides Hollywood’s) request to marque consciousness of senselessness. Everyone astir Janice is trying to find ways to travel to presumption with what happened, but Janice unflinchingly wants nary part. The occupation is, she’s not rather definite what it is she does want.

Eric’s enactment has driven a wedge betwixt Janice and her husband, Ron (Alexander Skarsgård). Both characters are religious, but aft the shooting, Ron drifted distant from Steve’s Presbyterian church, seduced by Bill (Tracy Letts), a charismatic (and regressive) pastor who tells the fragile Ron what helium wants to perceive astir putting his religion successful a Jesus who volition lavation distant his pain. Janice, who is unwilling oregon incapable to unfastened up, is not astir arsenic needy arsenic her spouse, who starts espousing biblical platitudes with the hopeless certainty of a drowning antheral grateful for immoderate beingness raft.

Although Greer is simply a terrific comedic actress, she lone shows that broadside occasionally successful “Eric LaRue” and precise subtly, erstwhile Janice starts to respond to Ron’s bare philosophizing. There’s an integrity to Janice’s prickly absorption to soothing herself with touchy-feely God talk, though arsenic she watches Ron find solace successful Bill’s drivel, we consciousness hints of envy: At slightest helium tin slumber astatine night.

Banal balms situation Janice, dilatory driving her mad. Whether it’s astatine the hardware store wherever Janice works — an insipid motivational poster hangs connected the boss’ partition encouraging passersby to “Commit to change! Change to commit!” — oregon Steve’s ain clumsy attempts to bring Janice and the victims’ mothers unneurotic for a gathering truthful they tin “heal,” Shannon laments however small genuine assistance determination is for radical caught successful the crosshairs of tragedy.

“Eric LaRue” is champion erstwhile its quietest points onslaught loudest. Janice’s superiors counsel her against returning to enactment — it’s atrocious for worker morale, they explicate — and yet, nary 1 astatine Ron’s bureau job, including Alison Pill’s flirty HR manager Lisa (a fervent follower of Bill’s), bats an oculus astir having him around. Such insidious sexism appears passim “Eric LaRue” arsenic Janice unknowingly places herself wrong a metaphorical cage due to the fact that she won’t travel an unwritten rulebook astir however a grieving ma is “supposed” to behave. Withdrawn and caustic, Janice is simply a earthy lump of unresponsiveness bombarded by those determined to “fix” her. But erstwhile the intelligence wounds chopped truthful deep, however tin she perchance cognize what fixing herself would adjacent mean?

Longtime Shannon collaborator Jeff Nichols serves arsenic an enforcement shaper and “Eric LaRue” echoes that filmmaker’s cautious attraction to unexamined pockets of American life, specifically, the uneasy hostility betwixt God and guns. Unfortunately, the movie lacks Nichols’ graceful portrayal of the everyday. Despite its respectful restraint, “Eric LaRue” tin beryllium smothering successful its solemnity, leaving Janice feeling one-note alternatively than a pistillate mislaid successful her tangle of emotions. And immoderate of the supporting performances are simplistic, with Sparks’ Steve unbelievably hapless arsenic a spiritual usher and Skarsgård’s Ron a cartoonish imagining of unsighted spiritual devotion.

But conscionable erstwhile the film’s missteps commencement to frustrate, the communicative lands connected a stunningly understated infinitesimal that suggests the perchance affluent quality survey underneath. Eventually, Janice volition sojourn her son, played provocatively by Nation Sage Henrikson. The ending shouldn’t beryllium spoiled, but adjacent astatine its finale, “Eric LaRue” refuses to supply clear-cut clues connected however to consciousness astir this parent oregon her boy. There volition beryllium much schoolhouse shootings and inevitably much movies confronting this epidemic. Shannon laudably offers nary casual solutions, though his sincerely crafted dormant extremity feels insufficient successful its ain way.