Julia Garner and Josh Brolin star in director Zach Creggers’ mysterious tale.
Even though it becomes completely unhinged, and frankly nonsensical, Weapons is fully-armed to entertain audiences, thanks to a compelling and mysterious setup, a suspenseful atmosphere throughout, and sharply aimed performances.
Narration by a child over a blank screen sets the tone. Julia Garner stars as Justine, a primary school teacher, new to the town of Maybrook, who arrives one morning and finds only one student, Andy, in her class. The other 17 children disappeared during the night.
Angry parents, including Josh Brolin, quickly conclude that Justine must have done something or said something in her classroom, and thus must know where the children are, since they all left their homes at precisely the same time (2:17 A.M.) and ran down the town’s streets, with their arms held wide, before disappearing into the shadows.
Justine is as frustrated and mystified as everyone else. She doesn’t know what happened, and doesn’t understand why she has become the focus of the town’s anxiety, fear, and anger. She becomes fixated on young Andy to the point of obsession, stalking him because she is convinced that he must know something.
Archer Graff (Brolin), a contractor, becomes obsessed with the disappearance, ignoring his job and his wife, and becomes fixated on Justine because he is convinced that she must know something. Meanwhile, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), a married police officer, is involved with Justine too, though some of his attention becomes tied up with a suspicious character (Austin Abrams). School administrator Benedict Wong and visiting relative Amy Madigan also figure into the story.
As with his previous film, Barbarian, writer and director Zach Cregger is great at dreaming up intriguing premises. We know something is behind the disappearance of the children in Weapons — there simply must be — and Cregger assembles the pieces of the mysterious puzzle together meticulously.
Comparisons to a puzzle are also apt because Cregger knows what the overall picture looks like, but is very deliberate in selecting particular pieces, and deciding where they fit. That takes time. And he won’t be rushed.
As with Barbarian, Cregger has not yet been able to grow completely beyond his earlier years as a sketch comedy artist. Many individual scenes in Weapons play beautifully, and end with good punch lines (as it were). The scenes don’t add up to very much, however, and the narrative becomes a jumbled, nonsensical mess, more interested in cheap, gory thrills than any sort of cumulative effect.
With those reservations in mind, Weapons is a wildly entertaining thrill ride through the shadows of an abandoned amusement park.
The film opens through the Dallas/Fort Worth multiplex, only in movie theaters. For more information about the film, visit the official site.
Dallas Film Now. 