Weapons

"Those kids walked out of those homes, no one pulled them out. No one forced them. What do you see that I don't?"

No summer is ever really complete without a bewildering new horror movie to rattle our senses.

Cutting to the chase, Weapons is a very well-made and uniquely suspenseful horror film. Like Zach Cregger's previous film, Barbarian (2022), it's also an efficiently constructed mystery. Although with Weapons, it might be a bit easier for eagle-eyed viewers to guess where the plot is going here.

Similar to Longlegs last year, Weapons had the benefit of superb viral marketing. I was sold on going to the theater for this from the teaser trailer alone, which is basically just a collection of eerie shots of the kids sprinting into the night in that goofy yet unnerving pose; more trailers should emulate this less is more approach, in my opinion.

That's the starting premise, by the way. Seventeen children all get up at 2:17 A.M. and run away from their homes, and no one knows where they went. They all shared the same class at school, but neither their teacher, Justine Gandy, nor the one student who didn't vanish, Alex Lilly, claim to have any idea what happened. The people of Maybrook are left with no answers. Then we see what follows.

Weapons is a story told through multiple points of view made up of different people involved in the missing kids phenomenon: there's the teacher, the principal, a frantic parent, a local cop, etc. It's also a story that toys with the viewer's sense of what kind of plot they're dealing with; Barbarian did this very effectively, as well.

Initially, it appears to be about Justine dealing with the aftermath of the disappearances, as well as being made a pariah in the community due to many believing she's responsible somehow. Then it flips and we see the perspective of one of those parents who thinks that way. Then it'll switch again. We see different angles of this town, clues mixed in with red herrings, all while slowly unveiling what's actually been going on.

As with many horror movies, there's a fair amount of social commentary one can derive from Weapons. A lot of people are trying to draw some vague parallels with school shootings, for instance, but I don't really see that. I do think there's something to be said here about mob mentalities and witch hunts in modern society, in ways that echo the more violent versions from the past. It's also made by someone who is pretty talented at writing characters in a way that allows the audience to repeatedly reassess their feelings about them, using perspective to illustrate the flaws and ambiguity that hides behind your first impressions of seemingly benign people. The believably multilayered characters end up being as surprising as the rest of the movie.

Some are thinking Zach Cregger is on his way to gaining the kind of comedian-to-auteur status that Jordan Peele got. While I'm not sure about that, I will say that pipeline is worth exploring. As someone who watched The Whitest Kids U Know for years, it's cool to see one of those guys helm big, ambitious movies like this. That background also means Cregger's scary movies, like Peele's, are imbued with good senses of humor, knowing when to lean into the horror and when to be playfully tongue-in-cheek.

This movie didn't blow me away, to be clear. I think it starts to fizzle near the end, when things start happening really fast and stop making as much sense as they seemed to be before. It's difficult to talk about without inadvertently giving a lot of stuff away. Overall, though, it's a solid thriller that's greatly uplifted by one hell of a tantalizing mystery. And though the resolution of that mystery might not work for everyone, there's plenty of fun and suspense to entertain in the course of getting there.

Bits and pieces:

* Music: "Beware of Darkness" by George Harrison playing over the film's opening montage was unexpected but a nice touch.

Speaking of Jordan Peele, he was eager to acquire the rights to this movie for his own studio, but ended up losing out to New Line Cinema. I get why. Similar vibes.

* There was an almost entirely different cast in mind for the movie, originally, but most had to drop out due to production delays and the Hollywood labor disputes of 2023. Of that cast, Austin Abrams as James is the only one who still ended up being in Weapons.

* Josh Brolin getting cast is a bit funny, considering his previous role as a nefarious guy hell-bent on disappearing a whole bunch of people. Also, between this and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, I'm starting to see why Julia Garner has become such a popular actor.

* Speaking of casting, I watched Carnivàle late last year and was pleasantly surprised to see two cast members of that show in Weapons. Toby Huss plays the Maybrook police captain overseeing the missing kids case, while Amy Madigan delivers a remarkable performance as a somewhat flamboyant character named Gladys.

* There's probably a lot of subtle WKUK references I'm missing in these Zach Cregger films. People on social media were quick to jump on the conspicuous shot of a plate packed with seven hotdogs, which is from one of those skits.

* Several different influences can be observed here. Cregger has apparently cited Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia as a big influence on Weapons, as well as Quentin Tarantino's films with the plot broken up into character-specific chapters in a nonlinear order. The movie Prisoners by Denis Villeneuve was also cited as an influence. While I can see all of that, I personally got a lot of Stephen King vibes from this. Particularly his small town monster stories like 'Salem's Lot or IT. I also watched The Outsider miniseries again recently, and this reminded me a lot of that as well.

Four out of five children vanishing in the night.

• Movie Reviews home