In an era when religious fundamentalism is dominating the headlines, there's something very timely about Middletown, the story of a deranged minister in Northern Ireland who turns himself into the Lord's avenging angel.
Fired up with religious zeal and indoctrinated with a clear view of the world in Manichean terms of good and evil, Gabriel (MacFadyen) could be a metaphor for religious extremism - of all shapes and faiths - in the twenty-first century.
Set in the godforsaken village of Middletown, somewhere in the Ulster Bible belt in the 1960s, director Brian Kirk's film is a low-key piece of cinematic Gothic, full of psychosis, miserablism and self-harming protestations of faith.
MacFadyen smoulders in the lead role, playing a recently ordained minister who returns from missionary work in Africa to his home village and discovers a hotbed of sin and damnation. The villagers' crime? Cockfighting and Guinness-supping on the Sabbath! That's enough to prompt Gabriel into a frenzy of religious extremism as he turns his congregation against the local pub run by his heavily-pregnant sister-in-law (Birthistle) and alienates his brother (Mays) and father (McSorley) over their heathen ways.
MacFadyen's performance is the centrepiece of Middletown and he delivers with gusto, throwing himself into a terrifying performance full of psychotic quirks. Whether killing rodents in the church or "cleansing" himself with steel wool, the Pride And Prejudice star proves remarkably unsettling, banishing the spirit of Mr Darcy once and for all.
Kirk and writer Daragh Carville serve him well, giving the movie an out-of-time, mythic setting that's very atmospheric. Kirk's camera plays up the dead-end claustrophobia of the village and the results are resolutely grim: rain, flock wallpaper and dank poverty signalling a vision of rural misery that taps into the western genre; Ulster's answer to Pale Rider perhaps.
Yet, as Gabriel's religious mania evolves into outright insanity, the film becomes uncertain about where it's heading and increasingly feels like a television drama. MacFadyen's performance is boxed in by the screenplay's limited scope. There's little sense of development to his character (he's patently psychotic rather than misguided) and those looking for insight into religious mania will be left disappointed.
Straddling melodrama and Gothic horror, Middletown never works out which it's trying to be and eventually becomes less about religion and more about a rather forgettable kind of ordinary madness.
Verdict
A dank, dark Gothic melodrama with a strong performance from MacFadyen, Middletown toys with ideas of religious fundamentalism without really developing its theme.
