Weapons

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I've said it before, and many would agree; at this point, we are amid a horror Renaissance, where old and tired ideas and concepts are being either reimagined or done away with altogether. A whole new set of unique filmmakers has been taking the helm lately, and the genre has made a significant comeback. It takes a lot to give me a genuine scare anymore, and I'm constantly on the lookout for the next movie that will legitimately make me lose sleep, feeling that fear I once did in my youth.

Although what I'm looking for is still hard to find, I still enjoy a lot of what I have seen lately, and the more I think about it, the more I appreciate 'Weapons' here. Some of my peers helped overhype me for it, so I went in with my expectations a bit too high, which led to stumbling whenever I encountered something remotely irksome. However, we can chalk that up to a "me" thing, as I so often say, because aside from a few speed bumps, this was very entertaining. There was no loss of sleep on my part, but the film still managed to stick out.

Narrated by an unseen child, the backstory is explained, as two years ago, in the fictional sleepy town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, seventeen children from Justine Gandy's (Julia Garner) eighth grade class randomly get up out of beds, run out into the night, and never come back, save for one kid named Alex (Cary Christopher). The community's suspicion immediately points towards Ms. Gandy, and is propagated by a distraught parent, Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), who digs tenaciously for answers as to his kid's disappearance.

While Justine tries to find answers in order to clear her name, despite the school principal, Marcus Miller (Benedict Wong) insisting she lay low, Archer does the same, despite the authorities seemingly not taking his requests seriously. But while these two offer the main perspectives throughout the film, several others are offered from supporting characters' perspectives, and the film is cut together in a style reminiscent of 'Pulp Fiction.' To the film's credit, it's interesting how all of the layers get peeled back one by one as all is eventually revealed.

I won't go into much more detail, not so much in case I give too much away, but more that it's a matter of going in blind, being much more beneficial. I gave you the bare basics of the plot, but as things unfold, they get weirder and more unsettling, with interesting twists and turns topped with disturbing imagery that will stick with you. In both Justine's and Archer's cases, the horrific aspects of the film become all too real. Justine has to deal with a whole town suspecting her and hating her, and Archer copes with the very real and mysterious loss of his son - both terrifying things to deal with, and both very real and possible.

The only real problems I had with the movie are few and far between, and probably shouldn't even be addressed as "problems" so much as "things I didn't get." As an example, dreams play a fair-sized part in this, and the imagery within the dreams is unsettling, so for that, the film wins me over. But with that said, I don't entirely get what the dreams meant in the movie. It's also a little slow-moving for some, but as a mystery, it's hard to criticize its pacing, especially when it adds to the eeriness of everything going on.

In the end, I don't want to nitpick too much on this. The truth of the matter is that the film stands out very well as a horror film, playing on not just creepy imagery, but the psychological horror I prefer when it comes to a more serious horror movie. I went in overhyped, expecting too much, but in all honesty, it's one of the better modern horror films out there. It could be overly creepy to those with kids, though. Despite anything I've said critically about it, it still comes highly recommended to horror fans looking for a fresh take on an old idea (that idea being something I don't even wanna spoil).

4/5

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