RATING: ★★ / ★★★★★

SUMMARY:

One night at 2:17 a.m., every kid in Ms. Gandy’s third-grade class woke up, ran away from their homes, and disappeared. Every kid, that is, except for one boy named Alex. The film is told non-linearly through multiple POVs from different members of the city.

THE GOOD:

The premise of Weapons is certainly a novel idea, though one you have to reasonably suspend your disbelief for — after all, these children were damn lucky nobody in their suburbs was working a graveyard shift or wistfully looking out their bedroom window the night they all ran away. Still, no horror fan can deny themselves a mystery this interesting and intriguing.

Weapons is also a film that knows it’s weird and revels in it. It’s always refreshing to see a movie as gleefully odd and bonkers as this one, guaranteeing it a loyal cult following even if it hadn’t become the box office hit it is now.

The marketing team was also seriously doing something right, because virtually everything about this movie’s promotional materials — the teaser, the trailer, the poster — utterly convinces you that this is a film you need to see. A premise this great is like a beautifully gift-wrapped Christmas gift to any film marketing team, and boy, did the team for Weapons know what to do with it.

THE BAD:

I knew I was going to have a problem with Weapons the minute a scary scene was just a dream in the first act. More often than not, dream sequences in horror films feel like an admission from the filmmakers that their main concept isn’t strong enough to keep audiences on the edge of their seats throughout, so let’s add one or two nightmares to remind them that what they’re watching is meant to be scary.

That isn’t to say dream sequences in horror films can’t be used for thematic or narrative purposes, but for Weapons, its multiple dream sequences (we get one more dream sequence later in the movie, with a touch more symbolism, though it ultimately amounts to nothing) feel like they’re there for the exact aforementioned reason. This is bolstered by how both dreams featured information that the characters sleeping should not have known yet.

It’s disappointing, too, because a film as sophisticated as this should not be using such cheap horror gimmicks. The first nightmare scene was my initial hint that this movie would not be as clever as it made itself out to be, and the more it went on, the more it kept confirming this theory.

Weapons also reveals itself to be very style over substance, as the entire film could’ve easily been told in a linear fashion. Its chapter-by-chapter storytelling could’ve given us important insight into all the different characters, but no real substance is gained from Weapons’s switching POVs, whether narratively or thematically, and it just feels like it’s there to add artificial intrigue and vagueness to the mystery.

Having to constantly restart from multiple beginnings kills much of the film’s momentum, too — every time the plot feels like it’s really picking up, a new chapter starts and we’re back to what feels like a first act again.

Weapons also has a tough time balancing its serious and its silly side. The film just isn’t very scary, what with its premise relying so much on the mystery, and while I did find Weapons to be an occasionally amusing flick, there were moments where I wasn’t sure if the movie was making me laugh intentionally or unintentionally.

The film’s descent into campiness, too, ultimately took away from the strengths of its mostly serious first half. However, the bigger problem is that the ultimate reveal in Weapons is such an underwhelming one that by the time everything is revealed, you’re left with the feeling of, “Really? That was it?”

A mystery this great did not deserve a solution this bland and basic, and as much as the film wants to make that up by having the third act be as gleefully ridiculous as possible, this only made the plot holes more impossible to suspend your disbelief for. How, may I ask, did nobody in the city figure out what happened to the kids, given the simplicity of the twist? Why did nobody figure out this or that, given that the film takes place an entire month after the children disappear? How are the investigators this incompetent?

VERDICT:

The more I think about Weapons, the more confused I get. It’s as if Zach Cregger had a brilliant idea for a premise for a horror film — kids running out of their house for seemingly no reason — but had no clue how to answer that mystery.

Weapons is a movie where the sum of its parts is ultimately greater than its whole. While I appreciate that it’s at least an out-there film, one that’s confident in its weirdness, its underwhelming lack of cohesion is what ultimately makes it a one-and-done for me. I’m far more likely to remember a safe but well-made horror film like The Boogeyman than I am to remember this film.