Maybe it was the similarity in names that led actor/writer/director Tim Blake Nelson to reshuffle actor/director/writer Billy Bob Thornton's overrated Southern Gothic sudser Sling Blade. Whatever the case, he's improved on the original, investing it with subtle performances, a chronologically skewed narrative that is more engaging than gratuitous, a metaphorical structure that is more taut than heavy-handed, and a resonant, if overstated theme. It almost makes you forget how overwrought and hackneyed the story is.

The theme is intoned early on in a craggy voiceover from leathery Sheriff Rogers (a note-perfect Hal Holbrook), of the waning oil town of Kingfisher (just one of a flock of religious references). How can there be evil if God is omniscient and omnipotent? How can we know His will? These theological queries take on flesh-and-blood implications when Rogers's officers find 14-year-old Tommy Spencer (Nick Stahl in the Jeremy Davies role) wandering in the night, mute, in shock, and drenched in blood.

The circumstances leading to this grisly visitation Nelson unfolds with a flashback/flashforward razz-ma-tazz that doesn't quite disguise its predictability. Six months earlier, local waitress Ainslie Dupree (Martha Plimpton in one of her best performances) impulsively married paroled convict Jack Stillings (a defrocked Kevin Anderson). Their coupling seems liberating and idyllic for both, but there are problems, such as his religious fundamentalism and her clueless vulnerability. Plimpton's heartbreaking performance arcs from innocence to independence, and her character deserves a less generic fate. Regardless, Blake's eye for drama, though not divine, still rises above the mediocre. At the Kendall Square.