Weapons review

 Quite a buzz has built around this film creating an impact in an otherwise superhero summer and its easy to see why. It’s a genuinely perplexing movie that flits across genres from police procedural to social study to tense mystery thriller and finally outright horror. Each aspect feels fresh even if we have seen many of these things before while director / writer Zach Cregger’s approach is packed with real jump scare moments that send a shiver down the spine. If the denouement is on paper unlikely then the film has by then earned your involvement and it won’t matter. Beware though- this is not for the feint of heart and if you remember Amy Madigan from such Eighties hits as Field of Dreams then you are definitely in for a shock.

Some spoilers after the break... 

The setting is a seemingly normal town of Maybrook though as we know few of these towns are quite as normal as they always seem. One day seventeen pupils from the same elementary class all go missing in the middle of the night without explanation. The next morning their teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) arrives to find just one pupil, Alex Lilly, remaining. The first portion of the film deals with the effect of this and the speedy way in which the parents turn on Justine as if she somehow had something to do with it. “What happened in that classroom?” demands the most outspoken father Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) during a fiery town meeting.

One of the most effective sequences takes place early on at by now increasingly paranoid Justine’s home using nothing more than door knocks and sudden sounds.  Initially I thought this might be the direction of travel for the whole film as the town became increasingly unhinged over what could be an allegory for a school shooting. However, Weapons has other cards to play.

After the initially focus on Justine, subsequent segments show these and related events from the perspective of a number of people including troubled alcoholic cop Paul Morgan – who is also having an on/off affair with Justine, supremely diplomatic principal Marcus Millar, Archer Graff whose son is one of the disappeared and homeless drug addict James. Finally, we see Alex’s story which answers most of our questions as it progresses. Each of these different focusses keeps the story fresh and the approach successfully constructs an intriguing web of interconnecting happenings increasingly centring on the house where Alex resides. Sometimes it feels more like a tv series than a film and I mean that in a good way.

The scares come often in these characters' nightmares though as matters progress creep into real life.  The remarkable thing about these moments though is how they are entirely practical- some face paint and a camera without prosthetics for the most part. So someone will pop into shot with a leer and exaggerated make up. In one alarming sequence a character we’ve already become familiar with bursts into shot and rushes towards Justine wild eyed, his face covered in something, the jerky camera movement accentuating the danger. Even something as simple as an old woman with overpainted lips waving in the middle of the woods works. These are essentially theatrical tricks which work on the big screen thanks to tight direction and editing. Cregger seems to find the eeriest camera angle each time. The washed out, saturated palette also adds to the mood as does some brittle incidental music. There were definitely moments in this film that reminded me of that iconic scary ending to Don’t Look Now while the ghost of Twin Peaks sometimes looms overhead.

Audiences may be divided over the character of Gladys, who as the film develops, we learn is supposedly Alex’s aunt but from the moment Amy Madigan appears with the least flattering haircut imaginable we know Gladys is not a normal person. The actress is terrific, brewing up a storm as she goes about her witchy business but narratively, I felt this takes away more than it gives from what has hitherto been a head scratching mystery. It’s that old audience dilemma- yes, we do want to know what is going on but then the reveals are going to either be too silly or too vague to satisfy. Perhaps Cregger might have held back a little more, a little longer and dialled back on the excessive witchcraft like cause of the troubles but it does lead to a shocking sequence at the end.

The cast treat this like a proper serious drama, their character quirks playing well against each other. Julia Garner is outstanding as the nervy, yet defiant Justine, Josh Brolin provides the nearest the story has to a conventional hero while Austin Abrams gets most of the film’s rare laughs as the accident-prone James. Aiden Ehrenreich as Paul is so wound up and off the rails, he could fill a film of his own with this character. Benedict Wong dials up the diplomatic niceness of Principal Miller while young Cary Christopher as Alex successfully navigates a role that requires us to sometimes suspect his complicity and later root for him to untangle himself from what is going on.

Its pleasing to see a non-franchise or remake doing well at cinemas as we need more original movies like this to balance the tentpole names. Weapons is too broad to be called a horror film or even fit any defined genre. It is intriguing, fascinating and frequently frightening. Best go and check you’ve locked that door…