With Weapons, Zach Cregger cements himself as one to watch within the masters of horror bracket – a chilling tale of a group of children gone missing, his latest is also a feat in comedy and incredibly entertaining, mixing traditional horror and the atmospheres of the more recent social commentary tales that have taken the world by storm, yet insisting on its aim to say very little about the state of the world at all.
At 2:17 a.m. (a time to go down in horror cinematic history), all but one of the children in Justine Gandy’s class go missing. The eerie voice of a child narrates the opening scenes, in which Justine and the sole remaining child, Alex Lilly (an exceptional performance from Cary Christopher), are questioned by police to no avail. It is, truly and utterly, a mystery, something from a nightmare (of which there are many in Weapons), and it isn’t long before the children’s parents are turning on their teacher in a desperate attempt to see justice served. Julia Garner is excellent as Justine, while Josh Brolin perfectly embodies father Archer Graff, restless and aggravated by the laissez faire attitude of the local police. Segmented into short chapters named after each of the main characters, Weapons is a masterclass in multi-strand narratives as each perspective uncovers a new dimension to a baffling turn of affairs – by the time the final chapter rolled around, I was positively on the edge of my seat with glee and anticipation.
While the first half develops as a gloomy thriller reminiscent of Prisoners and Gone Girl, with the occasional Stephen King jump scare thrown in, it is at the two thirds point that Weapons takes a turn towards the gory horror originally expected. Some genuinely haunting sequences take centre stage, with cinematography and sound production in full force – I will never hear a car’s boot opening the same way. Its genre bending skills are agile and fluid, though the reveal is strangely underwhelming, a kind of “really?” reaction quickly countered by its innate humour and commitment to its villain. More so that it is scary, Weapons banks on its sheer entertainment factor, one that is particularly delightful in a cinema game for audience participation – Austin Abrams as homeless bum James and Alden Ehrenreich as police officer Paul Morgan are of the upmost efficiency here, their game of cat and mouse completely parallel to the horror plot yet just as horrifying. The level of attention to detail is exquisite – when a couple walking down the street appear in both versions of the same event, it’s impossible not to wonder whether they have a part to play in the intrigue or whether they are a red herring. The narrative certainly keeps its audience on their toes, and yet it promises and reassures that, soon, after only another jump scare or two, all will be revealed. More interestingly, it is unclear whether Weapons takes itself seriously or not – a classroom of missing children is a positive goldmine for the turn horror has taken towards social commentary, especially considering the ghostly image of a gun in the sky Archer happens across in one sequence. Yet, Cregger seems to insist that the film isn’t about anything specific, thus merging its elements of gory, nonsensical pain (there’s a particularly awful scene involving forks) with the atmosphere of something rather serious. Perhaps it is the first of its kind in this sense – I for one have never really seen anything like it.
