SLING BLADE New at Press Time

This dark southern tale follows the life of Karl, a man who has just been released from an asylum after having hacked up his mother and her lover with a sling blade over 25 years before. Deemed “cured”, Karl secures a job fixing engines in his small Southern hometown. He bonds with a young, unhappy boy named Frank, and winds up moving in with Frank and his widowed mother, Linda. There, he meets another outcast, Linda’s attentive gay workmate, Vaughan, as well as Linda’s alcoholic, red-neck boyfriend Doyle. Through his contact with these new acquaintances as well as Frank’s increasing dependence on him as a male figure, Karl gradually gains some new-found insight into the nuances of human relationships. Armed with this bit of confidence in what was before a moral vacuum, and finding it increasingly difficult to witness Doyle’s abusive ways, he decides to take matters into his own hands in his own way.