The art of magic is largely the art of distraction. Many of the best magicians are also very good comedians, able to keep their audience distracted with enough comic shtick that they don't notice the leggy assistant being replaced by a dummy that's about to be sawn in half. Writer/director Zach Cregger's 2022 debut Barbarian was a classic magic trick. With that film, Cregger drew us in with what we thought was its story, only to take us by surprise in pulling several rabbits out of his hat. Barbarian's distraction was very entertaining, but the magic was also impressive. With his follow-up, Weapons, Cregger once again provides a very engaging distraction, but the magic is underwhelming this time. If Barbarian was a creepy horror movie with occasional moments of hilarity, Weapons is an entertaining character-driven black comedy skirting the periphery of an uninspired horror movie.
The setup is a doozy. One night in the small town of Maybrook, 17 kids wake up at exactly the same time, 2:17am, leave their houses and disappear into the night. The kids are all from the same class, but one of their classmates, Alex (Cary Christopher), stays in his bed that night. The movie begins not in the immediate aftermath of that mysterious event, but a month later, with the police clueless and tensions rising in the community, and the narrative follows several characters.
Weapons' premise may suggest a tone similar to something like Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, but Cregger's execution has more in common with a movie like Todd Field's Little Children, painting a picture of a small town America populated by emotional adolescents. Several characters play a key role, including the angry father of one of the kids (Josh Brolin), an adulterous cop (Alden Ehrenreich), a junkie drifter (Austin Abrams), the school principal (Benedict Wong) and young Alex.
But the most compelling member of the ensemble is Julia Garner's Justine. As the teacher of the class in question, Justine finds herself a pariah in her town as suspicion is cast on her by the dubious parents, despite the police having cleared her of any wrongdoing. Rather than setting Justine up as a possible suspect, Cregger makes her an active investigator, determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, not just to clear her name but out of a genuine dedication to the kids in her care. Garner has found herself largely typecast in wet blanket roles, and initially it seems like that's what she's been lumbered with once again here. But Justine is a multi-dimensional character, a functioning alcoholic who presents a very prim and proper face to her colleagues and the parents of the kids she teaches before letting her hair down in the evenings when she gets wasted and sleeps with Ehrenreich's married cop.
Garner is so compelling that when the narrative shifts to the other characters her absence is sorely felt. That's not to say the others aren't engaging. We find ourselves drawn into each of their interconnected subplots, and all of the actors are at the top of their game. But with Cregger setting Justine up in a manner that suggests she's to play a pivotal role, it's disappointing when she becomes reduced to a bit part player for most of the narrative.
Cregger draws on his background in comedy even more forcefully here than Barbarian. He skilfully delivers punchlines with well-timed cuts, with a reveal of whose house we're suddenly in a comic highlight. Ehrenreich, Abrams and Wong are hilarious as three men who find themselves out of their depth once the true horror begins to be revealed.
But there's little of the mastery of suspense and tension that Cregger displayed with his accomplished debut. Indeed, there's a long stretch where you might even forget you're watching a horror movie. Most of the horror is reserved for the final act, but Cregger's continuation of comedy proves jarring at that point, with a climax that some wag will no doubt dub Yakety Sax over on a social media clip, given how much it resembles the end of a Benny Hill episode. After distracting us with a handful of engaging characters and intriguing subplots, it's disappointing when the magic is ultimately revealed to be a rather uninspired trick, a flea-ridden rabbit pulled from an old hat.
Directed by: Zach Cregger
Starring: Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, Amy Madigan, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher
