“A Little Prayer” comes to theaters to add a grownup grace note to the end of the summer cinema of 2025.

It’s about parenting, the job that never ends and the parents who never stop second-guessing how they’re managing it. Beautifully cast, summery and bittersweet with moments of dry wit, “Prayer” is a small scale tragedy in light, deft strokes.

David Strathairn stars as Bill, near retirement age and still running the central North Carolina family’s sheet metal/HVAC business he joined after returning from the service, just as his father did. His son David (Will Pullen of TV’s “Dope Thief”) joined the company after his own service overseas. But something’s up with David.

He’s pulling late night hours “at work,” coming home drunk. Bill has started to notice, and to have suspicions.

He spends a lot of time with his daughter-in-law, Tammy (Jane Levy of “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist”), having long conversations with her, wandering the wooded neighborhood with her to figure out which local woman is waking everybody up with early morning hymn singing. He fixed up “the house out back” for her and David, a bungalow that he probably lived in as a newlywed with his wife Anita (Celia Weston) after he returned from Vietnam.

Tammy’s a Kentucky girl who pitches in around the house, defers to her in-law elders and revels in the life this marriage into this world has afforded her. She’s thinking about babies.

Bill’s raising an eyebrow at David’s insistent Wednesday “take the company out” drinking and dancing at the VFW, and the flirting with office manager Narcedalia (Dascha Polanco of “Orange is the New Black”).

But is he the only one who’s noticing? Is Tammy in the dark? How about Anita? She knows all about their other child’s problems. Daughter Patty (a wound-up Anna Camp from the “Pitch Perfect” movies) has just mini-vanned down from Virginia, with her young, acting-out daughter (Billie Roy) in tow — again.

Patty’s issues go WAY back.

“You used to say I was a’UGLY baby!” “Well,” Mamma Anita drawls, “You grew outta it.”

Bill, whom his family addresses as “Captain” when he’s in take-charge mode, struggles to get past “It’s not my business” to a “straighten up” lecture with David. Might David be able to go up and talk to Patty’s problematic husband, Cassius? Nope.

“Nobody knows what happens between two married people.”

Anita seems to know. Or says she does.

“How do you know?”

“I pay attention.”

That’s what’s demanded of the viewer of “A Little Prayer.” Clues and courses of action are suggested in a pained look, what’s not said over coffee, a walk or sitting together on a swing.

Screen veterans Strathairn and Weston are masters of understatement, and she lets a little “Steel Magnolia” drawled sarcasm in, when the need arises.

Levy plays Tammy’s cards close to the vest, making us wonder what she thinks, believes, knows or hopes. Pullen’s David is less sketched-in, a combat veteran with “issues” that are accepted wisdom in domestic dramas like this.

All this questioning and interpersonal pondering has a lovely setting. “A Little Prayer” is awash in working class local color, from Winston-Salem’s Krispy Kreme donuts to the verdant treescape and Reynolda House Museum and gardens to the omnipresent Moravian church bells and funeral practices characters comment on — Anita leads tours through historic Old Salem (Weston attended Salem College there).

Whatever its intimate charms, “Prayer” is a refreshing reminder that “regional” indie filmmaking didn’t end with the retirements of Baltimore’s bard, John Waters and the Florida Panhandle’s Victor Nunez (“Ulee’s Gold,” “Ruby in Paradise”). Oklahoma has John Swab, (“Ida Red,””King Ivory”), the arid West has Chinese expat Chloe Zhao (“The Rider,” “Nomadland”) and Piedmont North Carolina has MacLachlan, who scripted “Junebug,” and who wrote and directed “Goodbye to All That” and “Abundant Acreage Available,” and “A Little Prayer,” all set in and around his hometown, Winston-Salem.

Parents have been known to joke about “being on suicide watch” the first 18 or so years of a child’s life. But “A Little Prayer” reminds us that the joke is on them. The worrying never stops, nor does the fretting about who might be to blame when children get lost along the way or never quite grow up in adulthood.

Sometimes, “We can’t do enough.” And sometimes, “A Little Prayer” is all you’ve got left to lean on.

Rating: R, profanity

Cast: David Strathairn, Jane Levy, Dascha Polanco, Anna Camp, Will Pullen and Celia Weston

Credits: Scripted and directed by Angus MacLachlan. A Music Box Films release.

Running time: 1:31