A movie like Weapons really gets under my skin early on and I’m disappointed with the outcome. I give writer/director Zach Cregger credit for filming most of the movie in the sunny atmosphere of small-town Pennsylvania, even though it was filmed outside of the Atlanta area. The blue skies and green-grass yards seem to be a good contrast to the terror that is lurking. The sun’s always going to come out no matter awful things happen.
Yet, many of the important scenes take place in dark rooms so much that you never know what is happening. The story begins with a girl narrator explaining that 17 students in a third-grade class all have gone missing, reportedly leaving in the middle of the night. They were all students in the class of Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), a new teacher to the district who has a checkered past.
Only one student, Alex (Cary Christopher), hasn’t gone missing. School has been canceled while it’s under investigation. A group of irate parents and adults led by Archer (Josh Brolin), a building contractor, have argued that Justine knows something she isn’t telling people. Yet, Justine defends that she has no knowledge of what happened.
She’s also still likes her ex-boyfriend, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), a recovering alcoholic who has a controlling wife, Donna (June Diane Raphael), who is the daughter of Ed (Toby Huss), Paul’s immediate supervisor.
Yet absolutely none of this is relevant to the plot. Even the time they are left at 2:17 a.m. holds absolutely no importance except that they all left their homes at this time. And this has become a growing epidemic with horror movies in the last 10-15 years. They spend too much time telling us about the characters with so much needless development even Stephen King would get bored.
As a matter of fact, you can skip the entire first hour of this movie and miss nothing, because it really doesn’t kick in until Gladys (Amy Madigan) comes into the picture. And social media has ruined her appearance that it seems we’re more waiting for her to appear then shocked when she does. She is supposed to be the great aunt of Alex, but we’re never really made sure. Even Alex’s one-dimensional parents act like they don’t want her around. Could she be a stranger making the parents think she is a family member? You won’t find out because even Gladys is reduced to a less than stellar character.
Apparently, Gladys is a witch or something. I don’t know and I don’t care because Cregger never really bothered to build toward anything. This is like a porno movie in which we spend about 90 minutes following the pizza guy or plumber going about their business before the sex begins. And once it happens, it’s over quickly and there’s no money shot.
Speaking of porno, Stanley Kubrick once quipped he was going to make a porno just to show people how to do it right. This feels like a Terrence Malick movie where all the crucial details are left on the cutting room floor and we just follow people around for no reason expecting it all to come together. But it never does.
And like all bad horror movies, this is loaded with cliched tropes, such as the cop who is forgotten about back at the station. You know, someone sends a cop somewhere or he goes to check on something and something bad happens. And no one from the police station bothers to follow-up. There’s a cop car outside of a residence for hours and no one inquires to why it’s there.
Also, Alex’s story is so outrageous it makes me wonder that no one bothered to ask about his parents. Surely, they have a life outside of their home. No one from work bothered to check on them. What about social media or civic/church groups? Also, since Alex is the only student who didn’t go missing, wouldn’t the authorities look at him closely?
Where’s the FBI or state police? This is a huge case.
But yet, Cregger side-steps all this. I get that maybe he was wanting to focus on a community that has suffered a tragedy and how people finger point. But after building Justine up as a major character for the first half, she’s mostly an ancillary character in the second half. And I know a lot of critics and film scholars are praising this, but it never fully works.
I also think the school’s principal, Marcus (Benedict Wong), would have been more concerned but his character seems to fall into the stereotype aimed at both gay characters as well as those of southeast Asian ancestry.
Weapons like so many recent horror flicks (Hereditary, Midsommar, Smile and even Barbarian, Cregger’s first movie) all seem to be helped by good promotions. I’m remind of how The Blair Witch Project was heavily advertised and praised in the summer of 1999 only for many people, myself included, to walk out like we have been cheated. These “horror” movies reminded me of David Blaine, who Chris Rock called a “trickless magician.” They’re way too overhyped to appeal to many true horror fans.
Instead they feel more like they’re made for the approval of critics.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 