WEAPONS REVIEW
“Probably the most WTF movie ever made.”
I wasn’t really familiar with Zach Cregger’s ‘00s work as part of the Whitest Kids U’Know before seeing his bonkers 2023 horror movie, Barbarian, but that movie was legitimately fucked up, especially in the way it starts as one thing, gets the viewer comfortable, and then completely transforms into something else. His follow-up, Weapons, is somewhat tamer, at first, but trust me that if you think he’s going to play it safe now that he’s making movies at New Line, the home of Freddie Krueger, then you’d be sorely mistaken. Weapons has quite a bit in common with the recent Bring Her Back, another movie that’s hard to describe and write about without revealing spoilers. I’ll do my best to be as vague as possible while still doing my job as a film critic.
Maybe you’ve already seen the trailer and know the general principle of 17 kids waking up in the middle of the night and disappearing, only for their poor teacher Justine (Julia Garner) to show up to class with just one kid remaining, Cary Christopher’s Alex Lilly, who claims to know nothing about his missing classmates. As expected, much of the film deals with the mystery of what happened to the kids, and it’s not something that will be explained in the first hour, as we meet a number of characters around Justine, including policeman Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), who has been cheating on his wife with Justine. Later on, we meet Josh Brolin’s Archer, the father of one of the missing children, who doesn’t trust the police to find the kids, so he takes it into his own hands to find his son, Danny, eventually working with Justine to that end. Justine’s boss, the school principal, played by Benedict Wong, also plays an interesting part in the story, and that’s all I can really say about him.
Essentially, each of these characters is introduced in their own chapter, and some of them begin to interact ala Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. Maybe Weapons is a little less confident in using this device to keep the viewer guessing, but surprisingly, the movie is working just as well as a character drama due to the cast Cregger has assembled. Garner seems to be playing very much against type, being a far more damaged woman than we’ve seen her play in recent years, and it’s a stark contrast to her Silver Surfer. Brolin is also good, as is Ehrenreich (who I did not even recognize due to his mustache), but by far, everyone’s favorite character is likely to be a homeless junkie named James, played by Austin Abrams. He’s far beyond Justine’s level of damage, but he ends up continually stumbling into things, and he plays a role in finding the missing kids, but not in the same way as others. His reactions to everything going on around him shows off Cregger’s knack for instilling humor into situations that are not something most might find funny.
The results are a film filled with tension as the viewer tries to stay on top of what is going on without fully understanding things. Further into the movie, we meet Alex’s aunt Gladys, played by an also-unrecognizable Amy Madigan. She’s quite a bit off-kilter, and definitely seems to know more about what is going on than anyone else. Once she enters the mix, things start to get even crazier.
In general, Cregger takes his sweet time setting things up before the viewer has a clue what is really happening, and the film’s title becomes more apparent. That’s quite an a-ha moment for sure, and though some may find a few plot holes – it always feels like Alex knows more than he’s letting on, but how is this shy, young kid able to evade the police questioning?-- things do come together in a satisfying way once Cregger delivers the big reveal.
In a year when we’ve already had Bring Her Back and Together, Cregger ups the ante on horror with a movie that is the definition of a slow burn, as characters are smartly introduced, leading up to the last half hour, which is absolutely horrifying. In that sense, Zach Cregger may have made the most “WTF?!” movie ever, but that also is what makes it such an enjoyable experience, and one that people will want to watch a second time for sure.
Rating: 7.5/10
Weapons opens nationwide on August 8.