When students from a single class go missing, the town of Maybrook turns on the class’s teacher, Ms. Gandy (Julia Garner).
As tensions rise, Gandy struggles to work out what happened, and turns her attention to the one student (Cary Christopher) who made it to class that fateful day…
Barbarian was one of my favourite movies of the last few years - and I still cannot believe it has not gotten a physical release.
Such a tightly controlled thriller, with an amazing - I’ll keep it vague - shift midway through. I was primed for whatever Zach Creggar made next.
The hook for Weapons is one of the strongest I have seen in a while - it immediately stabs into a deep primal fear: the loss of a child, not in terms of death, but disappearance. The uncanny, uncontrollable terror that this film sets out is so vivid that it overwhelms the ultimate effect of the movie.
The hook of this movie might be so strong it is possible there was no way for it to live up to its opening.
I was trying to come up with parallels for how I felt, and the closest I could think of was early John Carpenter. Weapons feels like John Carpenter’s The Fog, in that it is the more ambitious, large-scale follow-up to a more contained thriller (Halloween).
It moves between multiple characters’ perspectives, drawing us closer to unveiling the mystery. And like Carpenter’s film, it comes across as a little scattered, building suspense in stops and starts.
There is a collection of scenes and moments, but it does not have the cumulative power perhaps intended - although the third act freak-out is terrific.
By the end, I am not exactly sure what it is building to.
There is something potent to the idea of the old preying on the younger generation - but it feels half-baked.
Maybe my expectations were too high - it is definitely worth a rewatch. The cast (particularly Julia Garner and Josh Brolin) are solid. I appreciated how spiky Garner’s take on the central teacher is - while the film aligns us with her perspective for a portion of the film, there is no attempt made to make her some kind of perfect victim or a steroetypical final girl. She is a mess, drinking constantly and trying to seduce her married ex, all the while trying to figure out the mystery.
There are things to like in Weapons. But it always feels like it never quite taps all the potential of its premise.
No comments:
Post a Comment