“Eric LaRue” (2023) is actor Michael Shannon’s directorial debut, an adaptation of a 2002 play that writer Brett Neveu wrote soon after the Columbine High School massacre. After the titular character shoots and kills three classmates, his mother, Janice LaRue (Judy Greer) is still struggling to function. Her husband, Ron (Alexander Skarsgård), has found his way at a new church, Redeemer, but Janice decides to stay at the local, less popular First Presbyterian Church. Will Janice ever find a way to understand what she is feeling and move forward? If you think that you know which way this film is going, and where it will land, you are wrong.
Not every actor, even the great ones, transition smoothly to working behind the camera, but Shannon is not like every actor. Shannon is one of the greatest American actors alive. British actors may be able to imitate us, but Shannon understands our contemporary thin culture and how inadequate it is to address the big issues. He has a bit of a jaundiced eye, but he also sympathizes with these frail human beings trying to rise to face enormous moral issues. While some come close to the line of being villains, it is all an act to shuffle as quickly as possible out of the ambiguous quagmire of this predicament: a community that includes the parents of the murderer and the murdered.
Greer finally gets a chance to sink her teeth into a role that is not a comedy and play the protagonist in an independent film. Janice knows exactly what she does not want but has some problems figuring out what she does. She does not adhere to gender norms: no uptilt in her voice, no smiling, being firm, raising her voice. When she sees three teens, she just looks at them and walks away. She wants peace, but she is not finding it alone or with her husband, and the people outside are not much better. When her pastor, Steve Calhan (Paul Sparks), tries to help her through it, which she regards with skepticism in her eyes, but plays along. Her silence makes her seem like the one person in the room really facing the complexity of the situation until she articulates her feelings and reveals a more shocking side. As Janice engages more with the outside world, Shannon stops blurring the world around her, so it is in focus as the momentum barrels towards the uncomfortable ending.
Even when he is trying to hide his light under a bushel, Skarsgård is gorgeous, but as Ron, he seems a bit simple at best and an opportunist at worst. Even though the LaRue family has been going to a traditional church, he has found his community at Redeemer, a more touchy-feely church where he feels welcomed and accepted. He adores all the thought terminating cliches so he can find a way out of accepting the permanent gravity of his son’s actions. The dialogue gets heavy-handed when pastor Bill Verne (the actor’s actor Tracey Letts) is pressuring Ron to get Janice and the three murdered kids’ mothers to meet for counseling at his church, but it is still realistic. It could be a documentary. Shannon gives moviegoers a peek into Ron’s mentality as he has a burger and imagines eating with Jesus, an absurd, sincere way to console himself.
The cold war between churches is not the point of “Eric LaRue” though it dominates most of the film. The film also diverges by showing how Janice’s workplace is also grasping at how to handle Janice and the fallout of her son’s homicides. The second and third scene with her boss, Jack McCoy (Lawrence Grimm), is refreshing because he has a normal reaction to the absurd idea of Janice meeting the mourning mothers. Janice constantly receives the opposite reaction to her going through the motions of obeying her pastor than Ron does. In the US, people would rather pretend that nothing bad happens, and women never get as soft a place to land (to be fair, if the guy looks like Skarsgård, it makes sense). Instead of trying to cheer her up, Jack is honest but not accepting.
“Eric LaRue” is the rare two-hour movie that gets more riveting as it continues. When the mothers encounter each other, it is so awkward, awful and honest. Sparks, who worked with Shannon on “Boardwalk Empire,” is less recognizable, but is also a renown chameleon. The scenes between Sparks and Greer set the tone for the entire movie and hint that there will not be a tidy resolution to look forward to. While asking Janice about a memory, Steve begins to get a hint about Janice’s real character but before he can latch on and trust his instincts, the epiphany about Janice and her relationship to the world and her son evaporates, waiting for us at the end. Shannon depicts the memory in an idyllic way and editor Mike Selemoh uses the dissonance of their dialogue to puncture reality into the memory without being indelicate.
Steve is a constant obstacle to the mothers’ exchange. From the moment Annie Parisse as Stephanie Grazer, one of the three mothers, appears on screen, she captures the camera’s attention and jolts Janice out of her frozen state. Unlike Janice, Stephanie is very in touch with her feelings and is the one who gets Janice to do what Steve was failing at since the beginning of the movie.
Kate Arrington as Jill Yardling is another suitable foil to Janice. Like Janice Jill is in a daze and does not know how to navigate the world after such a devastating loss. Neveu’s dialogue in this scene shines as Jill keeps adhering to gender norms and defaulting to talking in a way that does not disrupt the atmosphere and socially lubricates the tension. Arrington projects the tics of realization onto her face that she wants to stop being there for others and be authentic to herself, but unlike Janice, she does not know how to grab it for herself. Her anger will come off screen long after the credits roll. Neveu creates characters that seem to have lives independent from the confines of the screen.
Nation Sage Henrikson in his acting feature film debut nails the toughest role of all as the convicted gunman. It is astonishing that the person who caused so much grief is also the only person who has achieved the ability to think beyond his self-interest and comprehends what none of the adults can. His one time on screen could make or break the film, and he anchors “Eric LaRue” in a way that will make you want to reevaluate everything that happened before.
“Eric LaRue” is now in my top three films of 2025. Shannon and Neveu are a superb team, which is not a surprise considering that Shannon is a founding member of A Red Orchid Theatre where this play debuted in 2002, and Shannon has directed Neveu’s plays before. Shannon lets the acting and visuals do all the work without any flashy gimmicks to hide the film’s flaws because there are not any. It is an elegant film that may be the first American film that addresses grief and mourning in the way that it deserves.
