The best way I can seemingly sum up Phil Stevens quasi thriller "Frank Edge Jr." is as his own form of "Eraserhead." While I'm not entirely convinced Stevens drew upon Lynch for his influences, "Frank Edge Jr." quite often borders on the surrealism that explores a world that is apart of ours but somewhere in between the consciousness and the unconsciousness. Stevens delves in to the inner workings of one man's mind who has embraced darkness and violence for all of its benefits and faults and what we see for almost ninety minutes is his descent in to madness and utter sadism for reasons we can't quite understand or are never quite explained. In all honesty I would have been more than happy to have loved Stevens thriller, but I just didn't. At the end of the day I was more indifferent toward it than I was against or for it. While I didn't exactly despise it, it definitely will not inspire its audience to sit through it all and witness the events unfolding for our main character. It tries desperately to be a royal mind melting experience that wants to disturb and provoke thought and discussion but Stevens can never quite grasp the imagery he puts forth here, thus most of it feels forced and somewhat contrived. I'm still not sure why we're even supposed to empathize for this man, or why we should be interested in his insanity, and Stevens never puts up an argument for that proposition in the beginning.
 

He has little personality, very little individuality, and doesn't seem to evolve much as a character who is giving in to his urges toward self-mutilation and murder. Meanwhile his relationship with his wife who suffers through his insanity and takes him to task on his odd habits is often tedious and incredibly shrill making for some of the most insufferable dramatic moments on film, that don't do much to bring us in to the mindset of this protagonist.

Frank is a character void of any real personality or depth so there's not a strong argument as to why we should follow this man. When he finally loses his marbles, the drop isn't that far off thus the journey doesn't entirely feel as immense as it should have. Once Frank has hit rock bottom there really isn't much to do with the story and Stevens seemingly seems to scramble to find new material and murders for Frank to engage in that constantly jump back and forth between reality and fantasy to where you can never be sure if Frank is a man living in delusions or an utter psychopath about to bust his cherry and murder someone after living in constant fantasies through his snuff films. "Frank Edge Jr." should be respected for its clear ambition and willingness to work as more than a thriller and as a character study, but in the end I just couldn't involve myself in much of anything that occurred here.