Weapons does everything a good horror movie should, delivering chills and scares via a story that gets under your skin, before concluding two hours of tense set-up with a truly wild pay-off.
Writer-director Zach Cregger burst onto the genre scene with Barbarian, a thrilling horror movie that somehow successfully combined slow-burning character study with black comedy and violent slasher.
His follow-up is a more sombre affair – initially, at least – and based on a script that sparked a Hollywood bidding war, as well as comparisons to 1990s classic Magnolia.
That’s because Weapons is split into different chapters about different characters, like Paul Thomas Anderson’s acclaimed drama. Though here, the lives overlap when tragedy strikes and grief destroys a small town from within.
What is Weapons about?
That town is Maybrook, and the location for the inciting incident is an Elementary School where – via a child’s voiceover – we learn that on a Wednesday morning, “Every other class had all their kids, but Mrs. Gandy’s room was totally empty.”
The narration explains that “the night before, at 2.17 in the morning, every kid woke up, got out of bed, walked downstairs and into the dark, and they never came back.”
In grainy footage from ring cameras and CCTV, we see the kids leaving, and watch them take off, running with arms stretched out behind them, racing to places unknown.
“This is where the story really starts,” says the voice, which is where Weapons begins proper, scrolling through a roster of characters who slowly but surely shed light on the mystery.
Julia Garner’s Justine becomes the prime suspect
Justine Gandy is first up, the teacher whose class goes missing, resulting in parents pointing fingers at her during a tense PTA meeting.
Threatening phone calls, intimidating pranks, and the daubing of “witch” on the side of her car drive Justine to drink, which in turn gives rise to some bad decisions that have us questioning her actions.
As played by the brilliant Julia Garner, Gandy is a deeply sympathetic character, whose tough demeanor conceals a troubled and deeply vulnerable human being.
While Justine’s nightmares provide potential clues as well as a couple of cheap jump scares, which can be forgiven in a film that features all kinds of frights.
Josh Brolin’s Archer gets increasingly angry
A local builder called Archer doesn’t see Gandy’s vulnerability, however. Instead, this stoic father believes Justine knows more than she’s letting on, and holds the key to finding his son.
Played with a desperate intensity by Josh Brolin, grief and frustration have soured Archer, and fermented into anger, meaning that when he’s not bugging the police for information, he’s harassing Justine in his search for answers.
Archer is also having nightmares of his own, involving a house and a number and an automatic weapon that only serve to complicate the puzzle at the heart of the film.
How and why the Altman-esque approach works
The movie then moves onto another character, then another, then another, skipping back and forth in time as the narrative edges ever-closer to the truth.
While that Altman-esque approach could make for a frustrating viewing experience, here it proves to be enlightening, with new viewpoints on past events cleverly re-framing what’s come before.
Clues are peppered throughout proceedings, though be warned, some prove to be red herrings designed to throw us off the scent.
But a movie like this only truly works if that central question has a satisfying answer, and in Weapons the solution is both simple and effective, while precipitating a truly jaw-dropping finale.
Is Weapons good?
Weapons is an unpredictable ride that initially plays like The Leftovers with the odd sick joke, before transforming into something that’s much more fun.
Zach Cregger takes the story at the heart of the film seriously, especially when focusing on the confusing ways in which individuals behave during times of high stress, and also how community can quickly give way to mob mentality.
His rich characters and those troubling themes give the movie depth, while the film also takes a fresh approach to a horror staple that we won’t spoil here, but immediately makes Weapons a classic of the sub-genre.
Weapons score: 5/5
Weapons grips, confounds, terrifies, and provokes in equal measure, while also managing to entertain for every second of its 128-minute runtime.
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