Nate At The Movies

Whiplash confirmed! After breezing through a shockingly kid-coded horror/fantasy movie in Sketch, I walked right over to my next auditorium and began Weapons right as I finished my Sketch review. The tonal shift was abrupt and significant, and I was totally there for it.

I’m not seasoned in the world of horror movies, but Weapons felt especially unique and uniquely unsettling, bordering on dreadful. As I write my review, everything’s still feeling pretty uneasy, especially as an elementary school teacher, but I am very glad to have seen such a creative and engaging film.

The premise felt like it was more of a jumping-off point rather than a central idea for much of the film, but I think that’s because I wasn’t prepared for the multiple-perspective, nonlinear storytelling that Cregger employed. That style of storytelling, especially in a horror-mystery, was super effective, giving seemingly “insignificant” moments new meaning over and over again and unraveling the mystery at an incredibly satisfying pace. Each perspective brought its own intrigue, details, and creepiness to the story, and the principal cast’s performances backed them up. By the film’s end, all of those moments had been brought back together to paint a sensical and horrifying picture.

While the reveal of the cause of the kids’ disappearances was a little underwhelming, it was only so because of the expert build up and patient dissemination of information. I could have sat in that build up for hours, but if I did, I wouldn’t have gotten to see this film’s brutal and darkly hilarious ending. I felt weird laughing in the final moments of this film, but I think that was the point. It was an unexpected release, but a necessary and very satisfying one, though I’m still a bit shaken by the rest of this film.

From creepy and unsettling cinematography and sound design to the horrifying story starring my clientele, Weapons made me feel equal parts weird and scared, but I was gripped for the entire 2-hour runtime of my second movie of the day! I can almost guarantee that horror aficionados obsessed over Weapons and appreciated it more than I can given my experience, but it should say something about this movie that I’m walking away from it disturbed and in awe.