By Marc S. Sanders
The longevity of horror movies and the insatiable appetite that audiences hunger for hinges on curiosity. Horror is other worldly or beyond commonplace. It’s unrealized. Stories likely begin with the concept of a particularly unique, unheard of scenario.
For example, one night in a small suburban neighborhood, what could explain why an entire classroom of elementary school students, taught by Ms. Gandy, leave their homes at exactly 2:17 in the morning, vanish into the darkness and never return? Could Ms. Gandy be behind this mystery? Also, why is Alex the only student in the class to show up for school the next day?
Reader, the trailer for Weapons had me hooked. The imagery showing the silhouettes of innocent children running into the darkness with their arms outstretched was eye opening. A young girl narrates the brief camp fire ghost story in the preview. It also opens the film with additional details. This set up seems odd and different. Doesn’t sound like another vampire or zombie flick to me. This was going to be something else. Frankly, ahead of the release of Zach Cregger’s film, I could not stop thinking about it. I needed to know the reason behind this phenomenon.
Yet, anticipation and finally scratching that itch turned out to be disappointing.
Cregger’s movie answers almost all the questions it offers even if some elements are not wholly consistent as the story unravels. The only salvation to watching Weapons is not knowing why any of this happened, in particular with the squirrelly young teacher, Ms. Gandy (Julia Garner, whose career continues to impress) at the center of it all.
Like most second rate horror films though, there are teases of drawn out scenes as you anticipate the next jump scare. Loud knocking on a front door to motivate the protagonist to go “Helloooooo!!!! Anyone there?,” and then to open the door to an empty street is just as annoying. Especially, if nothing is ever explained of that sequence. Was this wedged into the final cut for another hair raising experience? The best horror has an explanation for EVERYTHING you see. However, I was waiting for a cat or a bird to jump into frame. It’s been done!
There are also the nightmare sequences. Once again, I have been banged over the head with “It’s just a dream!” This is such a desperate, last resort trope to stretch out a running time or make up for lost road in storytelling. Can movies just stop with the “only a dream” sequence please? Freddy Krueger is the only one who can legitimately lay claim to this tired idea.
While I may not care for the explanations of Cregger’s phenomena, at least I can compliment his skills as a filmmaker during the expository portion of his picture. The writer/director provides an abundance of tracking shots through the hallways of the school, down neighborhood streets, in Ms. Gandy’s house, and even within the small confines of a liquor store.
Much of his material is positioned behind his characters and he tracks where they are walking while being limited on showing their facial expressions. Recently, I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious and the film initially only shows the back of Cary Grant’s head. It works as a mysterious character device. For the first twenty minutes of Weapons, we are primarily only seeing the back of Julia Garner’s head. I was invested in this movie wondering what is it about this loner teacher who is being admonished as a witch within the community. This movie is starting out with a modern day Salem. Ms. Gandy is weird and I desperately want to look her in the eye, but Cregger’s direction won’t let me. So, I can’t get a grasp of this odd individual. Well played.
The outline of Weapons works like Doug Lyman’s Go or a Quentin Tarantino film. Cregger said he got inspiration from Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. The movie is divided into different perspectives of a collection of characters. You see the teacher’s experience first, and then respectively of another student’s father (Josh Brolin), a cop (Alden Ehrenreich), a homeless meth addict, and the school principal (Benedict Wong). Their stories eventually cross paths while more and more clues and answers gradually deliver.
What is surprising are the humorous beats that come out of some of the frightening moments of the picture. The bonkers ending feels like a salute to a memorable scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. What comedy derives from the dark elements though felt unwelcome to me. For a horror picture with fascinating potential, the threats and whatever suspense that was to be expected suddenly feels watered down. Now, Weapons feels like an uninspired episode of Tales From The Crypt or an exhausting and unnecessary two hour installment of Stranger Things. This movie had its brains working overtime when it began and then lost its intelligence along the way.
Two characters in the script are given too much unwanted and uninteresting attention here. When the film arrives at their perspectives, the picture meanderingly drags along offering little of anything substantial. It felt like I walked into a different movie, far away from the spooky stuff that was eerily described in the beginning of the film. More material could have been devoted to others in the town with a bigger and more personal stake in the central plot. There are too many diversions of little significance. Seventeen children disappeared and yet we only get to know one father and brush by another mom and dad. No one else is feeling the agony of this incident?
There are pertinent clues of simple logic that are overtly ignored as well so that the story can just simply move along. Specific objects in Ms. Gandy’s classroom suddenly disappear and no one seems to question their absence while this case is being investigated. Because it’s too apparent, you can’t help but dwell on this inconsistency. If you’ve participated in an Escape Room, this bit of information will tediously occupy your mindset.
Weapons has a marvelous idea, but it circumvents common elements of all horror movies too. There’s a spooky house, nightmares, a haggardly weird old lady, knocks on the doors and lots of darkness too. I don’t mind any of this. What gnawed at me though was the simplicity of the answers to the riddles, and the enormous waste of veering off into several characters who bear little importance.
Someone should take this idea of children running away into the night and do it all over again. I just love the idea. Other screenwriters would have written Zach Cregger’s story and then ripped the pages off their legal pad and tossed the crumpled balls of paper over the shoulder to start again. Cregger seems to have just settled on his first draft.
Weapons feels like a movie where the audience gets to experience a wrenching case of writer’s block, and nothing could be more frustrating.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 