Themes: Haunted By the Past, Southern Gothic, Dangerous Attraction
Main Cast: Martha Plimpton, Kevin Anderson, Hal Holbrook, Nick Stahl, Richard Jenkins
Release Year: 1997
Country: US
Run Time: 84 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Ainsley Dupree (Martha Plimpton) is a short-order cook at a diner in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, a country town in the middle of nowhere. Lonely and bored, Ainsley becomes pen pals with Jack Stillings (Kevin Anderson), who is currently serving time in prison. When Jack is released, he immediately asks Ainsley to marry him, and she impulsively agrees. Jack embraced Christianity while behind bars, and he encourages his wife to attend church with him each Sunday. However, Jack's requests soon become demands, and before long, she's forbidden to leave the house while he's at work pumping gas. Ainsley quietly rebuffs Jack's demands, slipping into town to a convenience store while he's away, but she soon learns, after Jack's parole officer pays a visit to their home, that his crime was more serious than she imagined; he beat a woman so brutally that she nearly died. Meanwhile, Sheriff Sam Rogers (Hal Holbrook) finds a 14-year-old boy, Tom Spencer (Nick Stahl), wandering dazed in ragged and bloody clothes along a lonely road. Tom leads Sam to the scene of a violent crime he has just witnessed, while telling him of the traumatic events in his family that led to an act of shocking brutality. Writer and director Tim Blake Nelson adapted Eye of God from his own stage play. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Playwright/actor Tim Blake Nelson's debut as a writer/director is an effective piece of neo-Southern gothic that is reminiscent of the stories of Flannery O'Connor, dealing with sin and the possibilities of redemption. Eye of God betrays little of its stage origins, because Nelson clearly understands that his setting -- a sleepy Oklahoma town -- is an important player in his story of a bored waitress diving into an ill-considered marriage to an ex-con. Nelson creates an air of stillness about his little town that is at first soothing, then stultifying, and finally more than a bit menacing. Martha Plimpton makes the trusting Ainsley a heartbreakingly naïve character, and Kevin Anderson is chillingly persuasive as Jack, a man whose conversion from criminal to Christian makes him no less dangerous. Nick Stahl (now familiar from roles in In the Bedroom and Bully) is effective as Tom, the teenager who is key to the story's central act of violence. Nelson tells his tale in elliptical fashion, holding back key information so that the true horror creeps up on us. It's a modest but impressive debut, and Nelson's follow-up, O, was a more ambitious work containing some of the same elements. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Richard Williams - Art Director, Avy Kaufman - Casting, Dolly Hall - Co-producer, Jill O'Hannesson - Costume Designer, Harry Jarvis - First Assistant Director, Tim Blake Nelson - Director, Kate Sanford - Editor, David VanTiegham - Songwriter, Patrick Geary - Production Designer, Russell Fine - Cinematographer, Wendy Ettinger - Producer, Michael Nelson - Producer, Mack Melson - Sound/Sound Designer, Tim Blake Nelson - Screenwriter
