Zach Cregger (director/writer) delivers unexpectedly wild fun with horror in his sophomore feature film, Weapons. Fair warning here: consider holding off reading about the film until you see it. Ideally, you’d go in completely cold. That moment has likely already passed, however.
One fateful night at 2:17 AM, 17 children rise from their beds and run out into the darkness, disappearing without a trace to the strains of George Harrison’s song Beware of Darkness. The only commonality with the kids is that they were all in Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) class. The other peculiarity of the case is that one child from the class didn’t disappear. Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher) shows up for class the next morning and sits by himself as the town begins to realize that something nefarious is going on.
One child remains while the others sleep — a chilling moment from Weapons.
“…at 2:17 AM, 17 children rise from their beds and run out into the darkness…”
As the film moves along, Cregger dispenses with a 3-act format and chooses instead to tell the story non-linearly from the perspectives of 6 different characters, Rashomon style. Casting a wide net, these threads are smoothly brought together at the crashing finale like themes in a symphonic concerto. It all begins to gel when Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan) is introduced well into the film, and the fog slowly begins to lift on the mystery of the missing kids.
All the characters are drawn as ordinary people, flawed and sometimes unsympathetic, thrown together in a catastrophic situation around the missing children. Justine Gandy drinks to excess and doesn’t respect boundaries. Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) is a macho bully, as is his son Matthew, and refuses to accept that the police are doing enough to find the children. Paul Morgan (Alden Ehrenreich) is a policeman and recovering alcoholic who has a history with Justine. Benedict Wong plays school Principal Andrew Marcus, whose facade of even-tempered compassion is a cover for a lazy man who is reluctant to get too involved in whatever is going on.
"…a massive accomplishment for artfully delivering a pure roller coaster of emotions"
