movie review: weapons

Weapons
Review by Jeff DeRouen

Zach Cregger’s new movie, Weapons, is a delightfully disturbing and wicked little tale of a small town thrown into turmoil when a classroom of small children vanishes. Each kid inexplicably, and at the same time, got out of their beds while everyone slept, walked out of their homes, and then ran until they disappeared into the night.

The mystery and how it affects the people of the small town is broken into chapters to give us six separate points of view of the events that unfold. The always exceptional Julia Garner plays the maligned teacher of the kids who’ve disappeared and is now under suspicion by everyone in town. She joins forces with the father of one of the missing kids (a powerful and moving performance by James Brolin) to solve the mystery and, as each chapter goes by, we go further and further into the darkness until it all comes full circle in a shockingly hilarious (in a horror movie?!) and totally satisfying ending.

Plenty of the terminally online will fight with each other over the term “elevated horror” because, I guess, some people need to create a whole new genre to single out the best product. Some folks have not and will not ever give horror its due as a genre with bold ideas and artistic legitimacy. The genre, though, should be irrelevant in our expectations of a well-made film that holds our attention because of how it tells the story and doesn’t glide by with cheap and cliché elements.

That’s not to say there aren’t jump scares here (there are and they WORK) but they are not cheap. The scares add to what are already exquisitely orchestrated scenes that maximize the edge Cregger knows he’s brought us to.

Is there a deeper meaning to Weapons? Maybe! I don’t want to build it up so much that it doesn’t meet the hype, but it’s a great story whose first goal is entertainment and Cregger has a deep respect for the audience and what we THINK we want. It’s thrilling, funny, creepy, and gives Amy Madigan (whose character I wouldn’t dream of spoiling here) a platform to return to the big screen and deliver an insanely brilliant performance that should absolutely be given awards consideration.

Weapons is EXACTLY the kind of movie I want to see: an original story told with expertly crafted filmmaking and terrific performances. I love where the horror genre is today and I look forward to going where visionaries like Zach Cregger want to take us because, honestly, it was really fun to scream out loud in a movie theater again.