"Weapons" 4K Review

While Hollyweird seems mostly interested in rehashing the same old ideas, there have been a few more original sleeper hits this year in the horror genre, first with the OK-but-overrated Sinners and now the weird Weapons. The story of how all but one of a third grade classroom's students disappeared without a trace is the sophomore effort by writer-director-co-scorer Zach Cregger whose previous feature Barbarians (which I didn't see, but the missus did and didn't like) made him a buzzy name in town and sparked a fast and furious bidding war for this script.

Weapons starts simply enough with a child's voiceover setting the stage: Two years before, 17 children in Justine Gandy's (Julia Garner, Ozark) third grade classroom simultaneously got up at 2:17 am and ran out of their homes into the night never to be seen again. Security cameras captured some of their flights, but little more.

After several weeks, it's decided that school needs to continue, but at a meeting between school officials and parents, blame is cast upon Justine with Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), voicing his displeasure at the lack of progress to the school principal, Marcus (Benedict Wong, The Martian), and a police captain (Toby Huss).

With an alluded-to checkered past and passions running high, Marcus puts Justine on leave and she falls into a spiral of drinking, leading to a hook-up with her ex-boyfriend, a cop named Paul (Alden Ehrenreich, Solo), whose wife is none to pleased with that development.

Cregger tells his story through various point-of-view segments following Justine, Archer, Paul, a crackhead lowlife that Paul encounters (Austin Abrams, Euphoria), Marcus, and finally Alex (Cary Christopher, making his major debut), the sole child not to disappear and whose Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan, Field of Dreams) is shaping up to be a popular Halloween costume.

Cregger does a few jump scares and the gore is icky, but fleeting, but overall he succeeds in ratcheting up the tension and keeping us tantalized with the mystery. There's always a risk of when what's going on is revealed and explained that it won't resolve things satisfactorily and if you think about what you're told, you'll be left with several "For why?" questions that could've been better addressed. (e.g. What's the deal with the giant floating AR-15 hovering over the house during a dream?) But those will come after the big payoff bonkers ending which shows Cregger shows he knows sending the audience off entertained papers over any gaps in logic until the drive home.

The performances are solid across the board though the characters are thinly-drawn with Cregger choosing allusion to specificity when erring hair the other way would've helped. The MVP is Madigan whose Gladys is a ballsy creation for an actress to portray, leveraging the truism that people begin to look like their spouses when she's been married 42 years to Ed Harris.

The 4K Dolby Vision presentation doesn't offer much in the way of nit-blasting highlights, but helps keep the many dark, gloomy scenes from dissolving in black crush.

While it could've been deeper, Weapons manages to creep you out then release the tension effectively. Recommended for those not super-picky about plotting.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.