There’s a scene in 1978’s “Halloween” where Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), running from Michael Meyers, heads to the nearest house and starts frantically banging on the door, screaming for the occupants to help. The porch light flickers on, and with it relief – they’ve heard her! But, as Laurie continues to scream, the light eventually turns back off, all hope of rescue extinguished. That dark porch in a suburban town is as ominous as anything else in the film – a chilling reminder that, despite the promise of small town solidarity, this is every man for himself.
Fast forward almost 50 years later, and we’ve got Zach Cregger’s “Weapons,” one more step forward in the broken promise of suburbia – a horrifying, ultimately funny yet brutal treatise on the so-called safety of these so-called communities. One night, somewhere in suburban America, 17 kids – all but one of the students from Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) third-grade class – got out of bed at exactly 2:17 a.m. and ran off into the night.
30 days later, there are still no leads (and the police are like, so embarrassed about it, says the unnamed child narrator who bookends the film). Despite support groups, despite meetings, despite a tribute to the missing children insisting that this community is strong in the face of adversity – the divides in this town have only deepened.
Even with the possibility that in this universe the pandemic never happened, “Weapons” is about as post-COVID as a movie can get – it’s no longer just faceless neighbors ignoring Laurie Strode’s pleas for help, but rather an entire town’s complete disdain for the suffering of others and their desire to ignore any hurt that isn’t their own. Much like in “Halloween” all those years ago, the first ones to suffer are children.
As thematically resonant as “Weapons” is to this country’s current situation – as much as there’s ground to cover about empathy, and community, and what happens when we lose those things – Cregger is also just really great at good, old-fashioned horror (he never underestimates the power of a spooky basement). He mixes humor and horror with ease and, more importantly, keeps the audience on their toes until the film’s nastily satisfying conclusion.
“Weapons” unfolds through multiple perspectives, different pieces of the puzzle sliding into place during each vignette. Despite the puzzle box quality of the film, it never feels like Cregger is trying to trick the audience. There’s no “Gotcha!” moment here. “Barbarian,” Cregger’s first, similarly twisty film, struck the same sort of tonal balance – disorienting, but strangely inviting. After one slightly inscrutable dream sequence, Archer (Josh Brolin), a missing child’s father, wakes up with a start. “What the f*ck!” he screams, voicing what the entire audience has been thinking for the past five minutes or so. We’re all in this together.
While the audience might feel that way, the people living in this town are all broken in one way or another. There’s Archer, bereft over the loss of his son and taking it out on everyone (mostly Justine). There’s Justine, paranoid and ostracized by everyone who doesn’t believe her when she says she knows nothing about the disappearances. There’s Justine’s ex Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), a recovering alcoholic and police officer doing a terrible job and having a terrible time, mostly through fault of his own – the incompetence of the police in “Weapons” is staggering.
No one is willing to talk to each other, because no one really cares about each other. When Justine meets up with Paul at a bar, she needles him into having a drink with her, egging on someone who she knows struggles with alcohol abuse – she just doesn’t care. When James (a delightfully twitchy Austin Abrams), a young drug addict, comes across some information that might lead to the discovery of the missing kids, he only decides to come forward after realizing there’s a $50,000 price tag attached to that information. Unless something’s in it for them, this community has been trained to keep the porch light off.
It’s no accident that Alex (Cary Christopher), the only child who didn’t disappear from Justine’s classroom, is the last perspective we see. His is the point of view that unlocks everything, yet almost no one has deigned to ask him what he thinks while they figure out the best way to protect him – ways that often backfire.
Throughout the film, Justine repeatedly asks the school principal Marcus (Benedict Wong) if she can talk to Alex, but is stymied at every turn (given the parents’ aggressive reactions to her, you understand why Marcus would be reluctant). Even someone like Marcus – someone in a position of authority with a vested interest in these kids – is hyper fixated on optics rather than the issue at hand. When Justine calls in a wellness check for Alex, Marcus only reluctantly attempts to do his due diligence. He’s looking to put as much distance between himself and this whole mess as soon as possible.
Justine is far from a paragon of virtue (Garner gives one of her best performances in years as she pours cheap vodka into a fast food cup while staking out a child’s house, all fragility and intensity intertwined). But her concern about Alex does seem to come from a genuine place, much like Archer’s concern for his son. In fact, Justine and Archer are the only people in town who seem invested in the disappearances. While they eventually come together on this issue, that’s only after a month of tension and inaction.
So, for a month, no one really notices the newspapers covering all of the windows in Alex’s house, or that his parents haven’t stepped outside in a few weeks. No one really notices that he walks to and from school now, dragging all the cans of Campbell’s soup that his little arms can carry. No one really notices because he’s still here, so he must be fine. Right?
There are a few moments throughout “Weapons” where different characters tell Justine that she needs to stop making this about her. Archer gets a similar treatment – stop with the “woe is me,” you’re not the only one who lost a kid. The people who tell them this aren’t necessarily wrong, but perhaps they should take a look in the mirror. Self-centeredness is a trait that this entire town carries in spades, everyone too hung up in their own mess to think about anything else – too engrossed in their own pain to notice the evil seeping through the cracks.