Weapons ★★★★

Maybrook, Pennsylvania is an ordinary town. It is occupied by average American citizens and it is not a town where anything unusual occurred. One night, at 2:17 AM, 17 children from Maybrook Elementary suddenly disappeared into the night. There were no clues and as security camera footage captured from many of the homes revealed, nobody there to kidnap the children. They all simply opened the front door and ran into the distance. All 17 came from Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) class with Alex Lilly (Cart Christopher) the lone student from the class who did not disappear. The people of Maybrook are naturally bewildered and the parents are desperate for answers, but nobody seems to know why or how this strange phenomenon could even be possible.

The film opens and closes with narration from a local, unnamed child laying out the facts of the situation, while a needle drop of George Harrison’s ‘Beware of Darkness’ plays once the actual disappearances are shown. It is unsettling and haunting, yet the song provides a wistful tone setting the unusual mood of Weapons. Writer/director Zach Cregger has cited many influences, including films like Magnolia for the film’s sprawling approach to characters of Maybrook and its non-linear narrative as well as films like The Virgin Suicides and Picnic at Hanging Rock. The latter two really strike at how Weapons feels. It can be terrifying and truly bone chilling, but there is a small-town lore element to it, a feeling of almost nostalgia as the narrator looks back upon these events. One can also see plenty of Stephen King influence in how Weapons turns its setting into a brooding, menacing, and unnerving character all its own. It is the type of mystery that shapes everybody who lived in Maybrook at the time, striking a before and after for them and those impacted directly by the tragedy.

The structure of Weapons enables every corner of this town to come to life. Cregger and cinematographer Larkin Seiple truly tell the story of every character the film focuses on. Dropping us into their viewpoint – namely through over-the-shoulder shots where the camera is directly behind them, point–of-view, and close-ups – or taking us along for the ride – through profile shots and tight tracking shots – and enabling the audience to feel not only their connection to these disappearances but their unique vantage point of Maybrook. Justine’s, especially after the events, is marked by paranoia. Threats and prying eyes are all around – heightened by the busy blocking of supporting characters and the placement of her engulfed by the townspeople on multiple occasions, especially at the town hall meeting held where she speaks – with her story taking on more of a paranoia thriller feeling as anywhere she goes carries with it peril, both related to the case and her own personal demons. Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), father to one of the missing boys, is living a waking nightmare as he is shrouded in grief and loss, all while he leads the charge for investigating the disappearances. The loss of his son consumes his every thought, while his desperate mind turns into quite the horrifying place at night with his actual nightmare sequence standing as one of the more terrifying scenes in the film. All the while, there are sections centered on local drug addict and homeless man James (Austin Abrams) and local cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) that can take on more comedic tones at times, benefitted by the deadpan and comedic delivery of Abrams and Ehrenreich.

Weapons offers plenty of thematic heft to go with its chills and laughs, working on many fronts. In examining its central mystery, it leaves the cops in the background with local police Captain Ed Locke (Toby Huss) assuring Archer and the other parents that the police are doing everything they can. Except, as the opening narration says, the local cops have actually decided to forget anything happened at all because they were embarrassed by their own confusion. This leaves the investigation in the hands of locals like Archer and Justine, who take steps that the incompetent local police force does not. The police are not coming to save Maybrook or any town. This is especially relevant when it comes to the film’s more socially-focused themes. One can see how the story functions as an allegory on school shootings – a dream sequence with an AR-15 lends itself to this interpretation – with an entire classroom, except for one child, suddenly removed from the town. However, Weapons is particularly concerned about what is happening behind closed doors and the life of an overlooked child. The home central to the film’s mystery and this theme carries with it plenty of foreboding. The initial introduction to its papered up windows and eerie aura is enough to give one chills, let alone once Cregger allows the audience inside to witness what is happening. The child who lives there is not really to blame for what happens, but the school is all too ready to look the other way when confronted with evidence of a hostile home environment and the child is made to grow up and make tough decisions well before any child should. It is a harrowing exploration of this hidden familial trauma – a further connection to The Virgin Suicides, while some especially terrifying homages to The Shining drive home the point – and of growing up around addiction with everybody caught in its wake left with lifelong scars that do not heal easily. Characters like James being a drug addict, while Paul and Justine have alcohol addictions also center this theme in the film. These addictions are the weapons with which these characters cope with daily life, but drugs and alcohol are also the weapons that are destroying towns like Maybrook, Pennsylvania all over the United States.

Cregger is always fully in control. Like John Carpenter before him, he knows how to press the right button at the right time, oscillating tonally (relying heavily on music for this) and creating a film with a central mystery one cannot wait to dive into (the security camera footage in Weapons feels like a modern answer to the futuristic visions of horror of in Prince of Darkness, packed with menace and haunting in its simplicity and sense of foreboding). The many disparate parts could throw a weaker film into disarray, but Cregger conducts it masterfully. The pieces fit together just enough, while leaving a bit of mystery in their construction and nature to keep one thinking about Weapons long after the credits roll. Seeing these events from many perspectives – most fascinating is seeing it at times through a character’s eyes then later seeing that character through another character’s eyes – and getting every possible angle together enables Weapons to be a truly transfixing experience. As the element of dramatic irony increases with the audience knowing what is lurking within this otherwise typical family home and what awaits the characters, Cregger really gets the nerves going. A car-set scene at night with Justine fast asleep has one jumping out of their seat. Once the home is broached and character after character go in to find out the mystery, one is always on edge, waiting to see when and where it will all go wrong for them.

Weapons benefits from its great cast. Julia Garner is so engrossing as Justine. Her story is one of the more intimately portrayed with plenty of close-ups, over-the-shoulders, and POV shots to place us into her mental state. She is so genuinely confused and heartbroken, while the judgmental eyes from all over town give her story of a truly threatening aura. Garner embodies this with her emotionally tinged performance, carrying her grief in her eyes, and her desperation in every line. Josh Brolin gives life to this brokenhearted father with his acting in the nightmarish dream sequence so heartwrenching and his performance in the climax so enrapturing that one can even get lost in his emotion just long enough to forget the threat is still there, waiting to strike. Their growing bond is unexpected at first, but so believably portrayed as their mutual heartache unites them even as their initial placement in the story is so at odds with Archer leading the charge against Justine, having believed she knew more than she let on about the children’s disappearance. Austin Abrams really impresses as the lovable James, who provides so many moments of levity in his wild odyssey through Maybrook into the heart of this mystery. Amy Madigan drops into the role of Gladys with such horror and menace. Her every delivery is so terrifying and matter-of-fact that one is always chilled at her arrival.

Zach Cregger has established himself as one of the brightest stars of horror between his debut Barbarian and now his sophomore feature Weapons. It is a film that makes one lose itself in the machinations of Maybrook, a town not unlike any other. It is suburban horror with a strong atmosphere, a lived-in quality that one does not shake off easily. It has a macabre sense of humor to go along with its moments of abject horror and unease, finding a unique balance that helps establish Weapons into a truly engrossing and richly entertaining experience. It is smart, scary, funny, and strangely delightful, marking a second time now that Cregger has directed a film that embodies everything that makes horror a fun genre.