The following contains some spoilers for Weapons.
My job is weird. One of the reasons my job is weird is that watching new movies is one of the things expected of me. While I don’t see as many movies as I used to, due to having small kids that require constant attention, I still as many movies as I can, and while it’s great when a movie I’m really excited about comes out, it also means watching movies I’m not sure I want to see, as was the case this weekend with the new horror movieWeapons.
To be clear, it wasn’t that I didn’t think Weapons would be a good movie. It’s actually been one of the more intriguing movies on the release calendar this year, and its premise is one I found awfully compelling. However, as a dad of a school-age kid, that same premise also made me slightly afraid to see Weapons, for fear that the movie would make me want to cry and scream in personal agony throughout its runtime.
Weapons’ Trailers Were Really Disturbing
From the first trailer I saw for Weapons, I was immediately interested in it, and immediately sure that I didn’t want to see it. The idea that an entire elementary school classroom disappeared, with seemingly no cause or reason, was a creepy idea. The film’s promotion focused on the disappearances without giving much additional detail about the various characters or how the rest of the movie would play out. It was all very mysterious.
The problem was that one of the things I have discovered about myself since becoming a father is that I now have a real problem watching movies where children are put in jeopardy. Any story where a child might die, where a parent is trying desperately to get back to their child, absolutely destroys me emotionally. So an entire movie that is about that, times 17, I was sure would be a movie that would hit me right in the heart.
But at the same time, as somebody who absolutely loved the insanity that was Barbarian, director Zach Cregger’s previous film, I was also very curious to see just what Weapons would be. I wanted to see it, but I was afraid I wouldn’t enjoy the experience, and with that conflicted mindset, I sat down in the theater and waited for the lights to dim.
At First, I Breathed A Sigh Of Relief
I didn’t realize how tense I was as Weapons began until I started to feel that tension dissipate. Almost immediately, the movie put me at ease. The actual disappearance of the children in the film is dealt with as a narrated prologue. It’s an event that happens, but we’re told, rather than shown, what happened. This is because Weapons isn’t actually about the disappearance, it’s about what happens after.
But more importantly, this setup means you never really get emotionally invested in the children. You never get to meet them. Only a couple of them are ever given names. They’re not characters in the film. They’re a plot device. This isn’t a bad thing, for the plot or my nerves.
I fully expected to spend the entire runtime of Weapons afraid these kids were going to be eaten by monsters, or that they would be transformed into monsters and start eating other people. But as the movie went on, I began to realize neither fate would have mattered a great deal. The reason children in jeopardy bother me is that I often get emotionally attached to them, because that’s what the movie wants, but that’s not what happens here.
Weapons One Child Character Doesn’t Need My Sympathy
There’s one child character of any note in Weapons, Alex (played by Cary Christopher ) is the only child in the classroom to not disappear. The movie’s vignette style structure mostly ignores him as much as it does the rest of the children, but even when he does become important to the story, even considering the wild things that happen to him, I never felt the terror I often feel when children have to experience horrific things in movies.
I think the main reason I never broke down over Alex’s situation is that Alex himself never does. He finds himself dealing with extraordinary circumstances, and he simply deals with them as best he can. He’s clearly afraid, but he never lets it overwhelm him.
I won’t say I was ever sure Alex was entirely safe, and at one point, I wondered if he was somehow behind all the terrible things that were happening, but the movie never gave any real indication that Alex was in over his head, and so I never felt the need to worry about his fate.
Weapons Was Much More My Speed Than I Expected
As I mentioned earlier, I was a big fan of Barbarian, and while the marketing for Weapons certainly pointed out that the new film was from the same director, nothing in the early trailers gave the impression that Weapons would be quite as unhinged, as darkly comedic, as that movie. Needless to say, Weapons goes arguably even more off the deep end than a movie about finding a monster living under your Airbnb.
I certainly had those moments when I got apprehensive about some terrible thing that I was afraid was about to happen. But I found myself laughing, or laugh-screaming, just as often. Sometimes the horror is so extreme that it goes beyond being scared, and you just find yourself thinking, “What the fuck?” It’s a sentiment several characters in the film share as well.
Barbarian balanced its tone remarkably well, and Weapons, dealing with a subject matter that, at least to me, could have been even darker, does an even better job. I can’t remember the last time a horror movie finale had me smiling/laughing/cheering at such a gruesome spectacle, but here we are.
In the end, I came home to sleeping children not completely strung out over a movie where terrible things had happened to kids, as I had previously feared. I’m in full agreement with our own Weapons review that it’s one of the best movies of the year. Julia Garner is now one of my favorite actresses. Weapons isn’t at all what I thought it was, it’s so much better.