Weapons is a fantastically scary, head trip film for people who love cinema

Jump scares in horror movies don’t do anyone favors. They cheapen the film and make audiences prepare for a lazy scare, rather than the steady buildup that has a much greater payoff. It’s not to say that a jump scare can’t be in a horror movie, but it shouldn’t be their bread and butter. Weapons has one very effective jump scare. Weapons is a fantastic horror film. More than that, Weapons is a great film that lives in the horror realm, but also serves as a thriller with dark periods of humor.

Weapons is told in an off-kilter way where the thrust of the plot shifts every 25 minutes. It’s told through the perspective of different characters until the finale. Each time the film changes to that character the audience sees things from a different angle and goes deeper into the plot. Audiences can be conditioned into thinking they know how a movie is going to flow. It is so refreshing to watch a smart, well-done movie that produces more scares and thrills than the average film, all the while doing it in a creative manner.

In Weapons, all but one child in an elementary school classroom disappears overnight. 17 or so kids walk out of their homes and disappear at 2:17 a.m. The film starts with this being a fact and moves into how the small town is coping with the mystery. This classroom’s teacher was investigated and cleared of any wrongdoing, but is still scrutinized by the town. The affected parents want answers and are vocal in their frustration, some more than others. The police have scoured the homes of the kids who disappeared to no avail.

“So what was the movie about?” my wife asked when I got back from watching Weapons. “It’s about the disappearance of 17 third-grade kids, all from the same class. How the city deals with it and figuring out why it happened”, I said. “It sounds like an episode of Stranger Things.”, she said. Stranger Things is one of her high water marks for entertainment, it also resonates with our 15-year-old.

“Think of the best episode of Stranger Things, make it scarier, more darkly humorous and mysterious and you’ve got Weapons”, I said. This left my wife slightly gob smacked so I added some details for context. The movie is so entertaining that you walk out of the theater with a spring in your step. It’s so unique and clever that you’re happy you didn’t read any spoilers about any possible surprises. Fans of great cinema will feel sorry for the next movie they see because they know it probably won’t be as entertaining as Weapons.  

For movie fans of a certain age, they’ll recall that The Crying Game wasn’t that great, it was the surprise that merited all the buzz. The first hour of Weapons is a tight, tension-cramped vacuum of mystery and dread. The second hour runs faster with dark humor, more gore and a punch of a finale. The vignette storytelling in Weapons takes audiences two steps forward, one step back, changes shoes, runs, walks sideways and then sprints through a glass window. It’s a smart, psychological horror film that you think you know how it’s going to work, but then does something to upend what you’ve been trained to believe. However, it’s not so smart that it’s cerebral or lives at an artsy level mere mortals will never approach. This is crowd-pleasing horror for people who normally wouldn’t see a ‘horror’ film.

Zach Cregger, the writer and director, does a stand-out job. It’s as jarring a job as Reservoir Dogs was for Quentin Tarantino in 1992. After seeing Weapons, you keep thinking about it. You kick yourself for not noticing a detail, which foreshadowed something else, but then forgiving yourself because the experience was so enjoyable. Weapons is the first movie in a decade or so that I’ve wanted to watch again the next day. It’s horror, but so much more. It flies in the face of those who avoid the genre because of its negative stereotypes. This is not the lazy horror you’d associate with recent releases. This is a smart film that sits nicely with Alien or The Conjuring as a horror/thriller film, that can jump genres and create buzz.

Weapons is rated R for language, violence, drug use and mild sexual references.