Weapons

2025's WEAPONS really sneaked up on me.  I settled in for a heavy, possibly preachy social, "elevated" horror effort devoid of humor.  That is not this movie.  I call it "good trash" as it enthusiastically embraces the sort of horror scenes eaten up by the peanut gallery.  The kind that make audiences scream and laugh, maybe even lose their breath now and again.  A thrill ride calculated to gross you out and trigger a jump out of your seat.  My kinda jam for this genre, in other words.

Not that writer/director Zach Cregger created a stupid movie.  There is plenty of commentary on addiction, abuse, mental health, toxic familial relations.  The prevalence of violence in society, even within the so-called safe spaces.  Underpinning every scene, no matter how wild and over-the-top.

All but one of the children in Ms. Justine Grady's (Julia Garner) third grade class have disappeared.  At 2:17 A.M. one morning, they ran from their houses in a frantic, arm flailing gait suggesting maybe they are running from something evil.  Maybe towards it? Something intending to harm them.  We don't see where they fled.  All the kids' parents  - including Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) - think Justine had something to do with it.

Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher) is the lone attendee in Justine's class.  Why didn't he follow his seventeen classmates? Is he somehow to blame? 

Everything will be answered, and you can bet it has something to do with Alex's Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), elderly and ill and very odd, who has come to stay with his family.  This is a spoiler free review, invisible audience, though if you dig movies like this you probably already know the details.

WEAPONS is told in a non-linear fashion.  There are chapters introduced by a character's name, and we follow them through what prove to be some bat shit crazy events.  Then we see some of the same events through someone else's eyes.  Curiously, I watched this movie a week after seeing TRICK 'R TREAT and A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE, both of which use the same method.  Here, most of the time it works, still feels novel.   Even all these years after PULP FICTION.

What really works is Cregger's manic direction.  He stages terror and mayhem expertly.  Enough for viewers to bruise the forearm of their significant other as they get wrapped up in the action..  And it's often damned funny.  Cregger takes a decidedly broad, B-movie approach to what could've been a deadly serious, self conscious drama, one that many immediately assume is a statement on school shootings, then complain that the film doesn't supply enough to confirm such subtext.  Other than a vision Archer has of something floating over a house in one scene, I see little evidence for this.

I like that Cregger allows us to form our own interpretations. Doesn't beat us over the head with leaden symbolism.  Anyone who has suffered childhood trauma of any stripe will relate to this movie in some way.  May cheer or recoil or both, depending on the scene.  That finale is disgustingly beautiful, though the denouement is awfully hasty.   

Cast is terrific.  Madigan really plays it up, coming off as if Ruth Gordon was portraying Pennywise.