Weapons
"Don't cross the salt line!" Grade A -
Weapons is a solid horror mystery film utilising a unique story, framed in character chapters and well supported by a strong cast.
Set in Maybrook, Pennsylvania, 17 third-grade children from the same class mysteriously get out of their beds at 2:17 in the morning on the same night, leave the house and vanish into the dark. Only one child from the class remains. The small community is bereft and bewildered by the children’s disappearance. Why at the same time? Why did they all leave together, and why do they run in a strange manner? Why was the student, Alex Lilly, left behind? Why did the children seem completely normal right up to 2:17? And most importantly, where are they now?
The police are as baffled by the children’s disappearance and have no clues as to where or why they vanished into the night. Alex is interviewed, but as a youngster, he has nothing to offer. Anger and frustration are then turned on the class’s teacher, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), with many people claiming that she must be behind the children’s disappearance. It does not help that Gandy is an alcoholic, and her good-natured actions in the past, such as dropping off a student at their home when they were stranded at school, are now being seen as questionable behaviour.
Archer Graff, played by Josh Brolin, a father of one of the missing kids, leads the charge against Gandy and has become obsessed with trying to relocate his son, Matthew.
Weapons is presented as a mosaic narrative where the film is divided into chapters focusing on one character at a time. For the most part, this is shown in a linear fashion, but several sections go back in time to add context. This is a wonderful way to present such a film. It allows the audience to slowly piece things together and keeps the mystery at bay for much longer. Several chapter endings finish on a cliffhanger, which helps perpetuate engagement.
It also gives the characters a chance to breathe and enables us to really get to know them intimately. We learn their strengths, weaknesses and desires. For much of the runtime, Weapons feels out of place as a horror, as there are large chunks of time where we simply watch people live their lives. Of course, their lives are being defined by the missing 17 children, but we get to see far more colour within this town, how it works and the dynamics between certain people. What this method ultimately does is give us more reason to want the protagonists to succeed, as we have grown attached to them across the 128 minutes of runtime.
Leading in Weapons are Josh Brolin and Julia Garner, who are established and emerging Hollywood stars, respectively, and it is interesting to see them in a relatively small film. Their work here is, as ever, quite impressive and helps convey the emotional toll such a strange and unfortunate circumstance can have on real people. Garner perfectly sells the teacher who resorts to drinking to numb her pain, and Brolin carries the heaviness of a father who is lost without his son. His dream sequences and the moments when he sleeps in his son’s bed show a man so broken that even his wife no longer wants much to do with him.
Two other actors who help sculpt Weapons are Alden Ehrenreich, who plays police officer Paul Morgan, and Austin Abrams, who plays James, a drug addict. Ehrenreich’s Paul Morgan sings from the same hymn sheet as Gandy. Morgan, like Gandy, wants to do good and be good. They serve pivotal roles in society, as a teacher and a police officer, yet they are haunted by demons, primarily alcohol addiction. Their relationship is longstanding yet chaotic by its very nature, especially given that Morgan is married to another woman. Ehrenreich plays a great hapless and gormless character in Weapons, and it was surprising and enjoyable to see his performance. I feel bad for Ehrenreich. I think he is a genuinely good actor with the handsome features and screen presence to be a much bigger name than he currently is, and I believe the backlash from his performance in Solo has sadly put a massive dent in his career. We should be seeing much more of him in films and in larger roles. I hope that with this instalment on his resume, he regains the attention of movie studios.
Austin Abrams’ drug addict character, James, is just fantastic. Abrams plays this role perfectly. His jittery movements, paranoid eye activity and dishevelled clothing look and feel like a classic heroin junky, so much so that it seems as though he was picked up off the street rather than auditioned for the role. Moreover, James brings a strange levity to the story. The town is gripped by shock and fear over the missing children, and as a result, the characters we follow are subdued and melancholy. But not James. He is constantly hustling to get drugs to the point where he will rob houses. His chase scene with Ehrenreich is supremely funny.
And that is another interesting thing about this so-called horror film. It does have some genuinely funny moments, especially the ending, which is subversive and ludicrously silly.
And I have not even spoken directly about Gladys (Amy Madigan).
Well, the less I say about her, the better for you, dear reader. Enjoy.
Weapons is a wonderful film that is undeniably absurd, but the ingredients mix beautifully together, and I would highly recommend you give it a watch with the lights off and the door locked.
A minus