Weapons

When a class full of children mysteriously vanish one night, a community is left questioning who - or what - is behind their disappearance.

That is an inherently interesting premise. One that seems to be captivating a lot of people, given how well Weapons is performing both critically and at the box office. It's just unfortunate that, even in spite of the movie's success, I have to admit that I was personally underwhelmed by it.

To be fair, Weapons begins as a strong and incredibly effective horror film. The direction is great, the performances are fantastic, the characters are interesting, the story is engaging, and the horror is genuinely scary.

It's just that, once the movie starts to reveal what is actually happening, it suddenly becomes less effective. The performances are still great and the characters are still interesting, but the story becomes less engaging and the horror becomes infinitely less scary.

So, your personal enjoyment of the film may depend on how much this plot twist works for you personally. For me, the mystery is far more engaging than the actual reveal. And that's where my disappointment stems from.

Once I knew what was actually happening, I started having questions about the narrative. I was suddenly questioning certain plot beats and the believability of certain events. In other words: I was pulled out of the story being told. I lost my suspension of disbelief. Which is a shame, because I really wanted to like this movie. Especially since I was a big fan of director Zack Cregger's last film, Barbarian.

Now, the two movies do share plenty of similarities; they both feature non linear narratives, they both utilize humor quite effectively, they're both incredibly well-made horror films. The difference is that Barbarian was able to remain scary and keep my investment even after the plot started to twist. Weapons, however, did not.

There is a character who is introduced late in the film, and I think the narrative could have benefited from exploring more of this character's background. If we spent more time with this one character; if we got to know them a little better; if we understood where they came from; that information could have fixed some of the issues that I have with the movie.

I don't think the character was bad by any means. I just personally wanted to see more from them. A bit more development could have gone a long way.

And I don't think I'm the only person who feels that way, since a prequel about this character may actually be in development. Which is something that I would be very interested in seeing. Especially if it could improve my opinion on this film.

I still like the movie. I just like Barbarian better. Though I was admittedly impressed with this movie's cast.

It's a good summer to be Julia Garner, because she is excellent in the lead role. I loved her performance as The Silver Surfer in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, but she definitely gets the chance to show off some more range here. As the teacher of the class that went missing, her character is clearly very confused, angry, frustrated, and fearful, but none of those emotions prevent her from being a caring person who is also quite headstrong. She's a well-rounded character! And, now that I'm aware of who Julia Garner is, I'm looking forward to seeing her in more projects in the future.

I also really liked Josh Brolin's performance as an angered parent, Alden Ehrenreich's performance as a bumbling police officer, Austin Abrams' performance as a homeless drug addict, and Benedict Wong's performance as a sympathetic school principal.

Cary Christopher also did an excellent job of portraying of Alex, who is the only child from his class who didn't go missing. He had a much bigger role to play in the film than I was expecting, and he did a fantastic job of carrying a portion of this film on his own.

So, with how good all of the technical aspects actually are, I don't have the heart to say that Weapons is a bad film.  Because it's not. I just wish that more time was spent developing the big plot reveal.

Meaning that, even though I don't like the film as much as everyone else seems to, Weapons would still get a mild recommendation from me.