By JJ Ledewitz, Arts and Culture Editor
“Last night, at 2:17 AM, every child from Mrs. Gandy’s class woke up, got out of bed, went downstairs, opened the front door, walked into the dark… and they never came back.”
These were the words on the poster for Weapons, and this was pretty much all I knew about the film going in. I also knew that it was some sort of horror/mystery film. At first, it seemed pretty straightforward. I avoided the trailers — aside from one scene I happened to come across online, not even realizing it was from this film, but nothing could prepare me for the experience of watching the film.
Weapons comes from comedian-turned-horror director Zach Cregger, who made his breakout debut with the highly praised horror film Barbarian (2022). As the second horror film of his career, Weapons would prove if Cregger was a one-hit wonder, or if he really has what it takes to make great horror films.
Weapons tells a non-linear story over the course of a few days, two years after seventeen children went missing overnight. Most of the parents blame the teacher, Justine Gandy, played brilliantly by Julia Garner, who has decided to numb her grief with alcohol. She cares about her missing students just as much as the parents — something that Josh Brolin’s character, Archer, one of the parents, refuses to comprehend. Archer, filled with anger and denial, is frustrated at the police for “not doing enough,” and he constantly rewatches the camera footage of his son running into the night from two years earlier.
The film takes a while to settle into place. It starts a bit slow, building up the characters and the small town, almost tricking the audience into thinking one might piece together the film’s mystery before it’s revealed. As the perspective shifts between Justine, Archer, Justine’s ex-boyfriend Paul, the principal Marcus and other characters, the mystery deepens and is no longer just about what happened to the kids but about what is really going on in this town, and why only one kid from the class, Alex Lilly, didn’t disappear like his classmates.
It’s hard for a mystery/horror film to use a non-linear timeline to its advantage. A mystery intrinsically has something to hide that can only be revealed later down the line, so a non-linear timeline can ruin everything. And horror films often hide the true “monster” until most of the film has passed. Yet Weapons bends both genres skilfully, giving a taste of the real monster before you even realize what it truly is, while adding a deeper level of uncertainty relating to the mystery.
Unlike Cregger’s Barbarian, Weapons isn’t conventionally scary. It’s eerie and unsettling, that’s for sure, though, for the most part, the only way Cregger manages to scare you is through unnecessary jump scares. Still, the disturbing ambiance of the film creeps up on the audience and makes up for the lack of true horror, letting you go to sleep at night without any trouble but making you question whether you’ll wake up the next morning.
I went in thinking it was a horror film with a mystery sprinkled throughout. What I got was a disturbing and tragic tale of how disappearance – and assumed death – of loved ones can bring people to saying and doing terrible things, all to hide the pain they feel. It’s a nightmarish situation, one that manifests itself as a real nightmare, playing on the screen, out of order, refusing to give time and space for mourning. I left the theater more sad than scared.
As Cregger’s second horror film, Weapons builds on what Barbarian was lacking – a totally new take on the horror genre. Although it’s not nearly as scary as Barbarian, Weapons delivers a deeper story about grief, loss and the unexplainable. It’s a wild emotional ride that I highly recommend you check out.
Photo Caption: Child running in the dark.
Photo Credit: Unsplash