Weapons

5 outta 5

Weapons is a very intense, messy, weird and gory horror film about grief and scapegoating and family. It is sort of a zombie movie crossed with a possession film with witchcraft horror along with some relationship drama and characters spiraling out. There are a lot of incredibly creepy visuals which keeps the audience on edge, and a few tension breaking funny moments that contrast with the horror and gore bits. Weapons is a fantastic, insane, intense experience that keeps the viewer guessing what is going to happen next, and the answer often isn’t pretty.

When seventeen kids run away in the middle of the night, it leaves the small town distraught. They all came from the same class, so the populace turns their ire towards the kid’s teacher, Justine (Juila Garner). Leading the accusatory charge is the grieving parent, Archer (Josh Brolin). The Principal, Marcus (Benedict Wong), tells Justine she needs to take some time off, especially since she is talking to the one kid who didn’t run off, Alex (Cary Christopher). Seeking solace, she gets into a situationship with the police officer, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) but Paul isn’t the best companion, he’s trying to stay sober, his wife thinks he’s cheating on her (she’s right) and he keeps running into a local drug addict, James (Austin Abrams). These characters collide with the arrival of Alex’s incredibly weird and old Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan) who is secretly manipulating all the citizens of this town.

This is a shifting perspective movie where the main character becomes somebody else every twenty minutes or so, with like seven different characters the film revolves around at some point. The first story with Justine feels like a meditation on grief as she spirals out into drinking and she keeps following Alex, pouring booze into a Big Gulp. Hooking up with her old flame, Paul just seems like another bad decision in a history of bad decisions. Garner is great in the role, and she shows this deep sadness that her students have disappeared, she even begins a town meeting on the verge of tears saying she loved the kids. Brolin plays the father who thinks that she is a suspect, and he is testy towards her and the principal. But he also digs into the security camera footage of the night the kids fled, noticing they’re all running in the same pattern. He also has one of the movie’s best bits when he has an incredibly weird dream about the kids and wakes up screaming saying, “What the $%$# was that?” Often, the movie throws out funny reactions to the intensely strange bits to deflate the tension.

One extremely frustrated character is Paul the cop, and Ehrenreich shows a guy trying to keep it together as he’s one drink away from his life collapsing. He’s both very funny and quite tragic as he abuses his police powers for his own benefit. When he hooks up with Justine, he makes an escalating series of bad decisions, and runs into the local crack smoker, James. Abrams as the drug addict is in his own different tonal movie that is darkly funny as all these things keep going wrong. When he gets a lead on the location of the kids, he’s still rather high as he makes babbling inquiries about how he can get the reward money. When both him and Paul end up investigating the scene, Paul just looks at him with loathing.

The different tone of each vignettes gives each story its own flair. Marcus’ story has Wong playing a good man who is trying to be understanding about the pain that Justine is going through, patiently telling her interest in the students isn’t professional. Things turn weird when Gladys shows up, leading to one of the film’s most horrific moments as Wong, with some truly grotesque face makeup, is running around completely crazed, and his ending is jaw-dropping. When the story focuses on Alex and his Aunt Gladys, it has emotional pathos of a kid yearning for his parents to return to normal and some twisted horror moments. Christopher as Alex runs a gamut of emotions as he is trying to keep a secret about how weird it is getting with his parents that are under the influence of Gladys, but also keep them safe. There is a moment when Gladys demonstrates the power she has over his parents that is shocking. Madigan as Gladys is very twisted, she starts off as seemingly meek but shows her power in very disturbing ways, like when she is with Marcus and his partner. Gladys seems like an otherworldly creature, and Alex sees her weakening as he tries to save her parents.

All these stories collide in a crazy confrontation involving characters who are possessed and try to kill any interlopers. But even in very dark moments, there’s a funny gag when Archer is repeatedly flinging a possessed person against the wall, as the guy keeps getting up and screaming. The final bit in the movie is a brutal bit of cathartic violence that is striking. Weapons is a horror movie that keeps throwing twists on characters and shifting perspectives that make for a hell of a ride.