No assembly RequireD

Tell me if you’ve heard this story before. At 2:17 one morning seventeen children ran out of their homes and into the darkness never to return again, leaving a town and one lonely school teacher in disarray. According to Zach Cregger’s second feature WEAPONS this is a true story and while its peculiarities may scream original WEAPONS is a film that holds an unfortunate deep seeded reality in American society. A film that can be seen as a bonkers mosaic of suburban madness and violence, while also towing an incredibly careful line of rewriting history of current events. Cregger the former Whitest Kid U Know also knows that crossing lines or at least stretching them far beyond their limits can be just as entertaining because WEAPONS ignores the “elevated horror” that has dominated for the past decade and instead delivers a giant crowd pleaser that reminds us that its okay to scream and laugh amongst a full theater audience while still finding an easy path to understanding the motif Cregger has deliberately set out to expose. A film holding onto its great mystery also becomes one that is not afraid to hand held in a fashion that feels less demeaning and more so just comforting. It doesn’t spell everything out, but rather just chooses to take its time to unfold leaving enough on the table to satisfy while still holding out on a final dessert. A filmmaker in his second outing often has a ton to live up for especially when delivering the out of nowhere success of “Barbarian” and thankfully WEAPONS is a deeper inspection of the day to day white picket fence life and the messed up horrors that deeply hold them together. Cregger uses WEAPONS not just as a way to break down these barriers but also prove that every mystery has answers and that is when the real horror begins.

No one is more protective of children than their own parents. At least that is what you want to believe as a father and a mother to a young child. So when the town of Maybrook Pennsylvania suffers a confusing and disturbing loss of seventeen children all from the same classroom they demand answers and even more so a person to blame. Justine Gandy (Julia Garner working double duty this summer) their teacher is the easy blame especially for Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) a father and contractor who spends his days investigating every inch of the children’s disappearance. WEAPONS’ premise alone is enough to build a grand mysterious epic around so when rumors of Cregger being inspired by Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia” started to build up it was met with the usual eye roll. Who hasn’t been inspired by Anderson’s three hour saga of lost souls connected through pain and love. And yet it quickly becomes clear that Cregger wasn’t just throwing words around. WEAPONS an ensemble piece for a new generation. The story is told through five initial perspectives all dedicated to the showcases of its terrific performer. With little need to spoil main territory it can be enough to say that each character it follows carries their own weight of pain and purposeful mistakes. Justine an alcoholic seeks comfort in trying to still be a good person to the one remaining kid in her class who didn’t disappear, Alex because for her that would help her own pain even if she disguises it as virtue. Archer’s premeditated decision to blame the disappearance on Justine only gradually causes decline in both his professional and personal lives. And then of course there is that pesky mysterious old lady with too much makeup they both keep having nightmares about. Cregger’s script never chooses to unload a ton of material all at once onto you but instead takes those lessons from that forementioned “Magnolia” and slowly and carefully unleashes his madness allowing it all to still feel overwhelming in the best ways. You know there is always a mystery at hand but spending time with the screwed up residents of Maybrook seems just as exciting. And that is because it is thanks to a well balanced script of suffering mixed with every day fuck ups that lead to some big belly laughs. It also helps that the cast is full of first-rate performers and not just twitter monthly fascination. Alden Ehrenreich is joyous as a moronic and overtly aggressive cop, while Austin Abrams plays into an already established career of screw ups as a drug addict who like many stumbles into the wrong house. All of Cregger’s performers elevate the page that is frankly nothing less than whole heartedly original. Even if WEAPONS holds some classic horror staples (scary basements are back y’all!) it still feels like we are witnessing something fresh or at least something lost long ago in cinema.

WEAPONS is the kind of film that many will argue benefits from going in blind and this critic will agree for the most part, between Cregger’s first film and last year’s “Longlegs” the marketing has been quite joyous and pragmatic in lifting up curiosity without showing its full hand. But WEAPONS in the critical sense doesn’t need plot to be praised, that is not to say what transpires from pages to page is forgettable in fact its pretty damn hard to shake (this critic is waking up from several nightmares involving a certain house break-in scene). But where WEAPONS succeeds better than most is both its search for answers and its self-reflection that maybe Cregger isn’t the right guy to give us solutions. Hell very few of us actually are. But what WEAPONS does want to show is the problems at hand. There is no denying the allegorical nature of WEAPONS even with just the title alone. A classroom full of kids are gone and only one is left. Just the weight of that notion is beyond disturbing. We live in a time where school shootings are a common occurrence to the point where we didn’t go weeks for a stretch of time without hearing about one or possibly (and devastatingly) experiencing it firsthand. WEAPONS may save its final reveal on who to blame for a bloody and surprisingly outrageous final that even teeters on “its okay to laugh” humor. But before all that it is a film about a town riddled with pain and desperate for reason. Cregger uses his array of characters to prove that for some answers will give them comfort and for others they barely think about the issue at hand at all, and yet all of it is purely honest and natural. Setting his story in Pennsylvania doesn’t evoke political debate of the situation but rather to remind us that it happens everywhere and to lock down on a state that votes blue but shines red is an interesting dichotomy of an ongoing situation never looking for solution. The weapons always remain safe while everyone else remains in harms way. And it is in that belief that WEAPONS is far from the hangout in Maybrook town movie and always at the forefront a movie with a concrete issue that it never knows how to solve and why should it do the work so many choose to ignore. You get the movie you deserve and between this and Ari Aster’s “Eddington” the time of American self-reflection is always in but the work needed to fix it all is for a later date.

For all its respectful emotional real life tie-in’s you’d be shocked to know that WEAPONS is also one of the funniest films of the year which is credit to the balance often not chosen by many filmmakers. Throughout its interconnecting stories there is the constant fear that all this could be for nothing if it cannot stick the landing. Not every film has that weight but unfortunately horror is a genre often focused on its endings especially when it navigates towards some answers as it continuously asks the same question, “what happened to the children.” And while you find yourself debating in your head whether you want to know or not (after all we have been programmed to believe less is more) you start to realize that Cregger knows that more is more so why not give them the lot. In doing so he delivers a final perspective that is as messed up as it is entertaining and still in doing do always feels played in the most respectful manner to the circumstances at hand. WEAPONS takes a stance early on when it comes to the way we protect and more so disregard our children and in its final act takes that unprotective manner to an extremity that allows us to face our own issues in the form of something greater. Maybe its Cregger’s way of allowing us to swallow an exceedingly difficult pill easier or maybe he just wanted to entertain the living hell out of us. Either way WEAPONS puts the cinematic entertainment right on par with the issues at hand not just at the end but throughout its entirety as it becomes that rare horror film that understands its own responsibilities while still upping the playing field. Pretty impressive for a second outing but more so in a time when the divisive community prefers one over the other allowing for the problem to continue but purposefully never be resolved.

A

WEAPONS IS NOW PLAYING IN THEATERS