I kept hearing about this movie repeatedly for the past couple weeks, so when my best friend suggested that we go in the movie house, I said, “We haven’t seen ‘Weapons.’ Let’s go see that.” And see it, we did. Now, for the record, my best friend, Brittany, and I watch horror films like someone would eat a snack. You know how you watch a movie and eat popcorn like a regular person. We’re not the people who think a razor blade is in the bucket, if that makes sense. The people who scare at horror films are those people. I will preface this review by saying I’m not sure if the movie is actually terrifying for normal people, or if Britt and I have a condition. Jury is out on that last part.
“Weapons” should not have been as funny as it was, but I can’t really rest on the fact that Britt and I don’t scare easily because there were other people in the theater laughing with us. The plot is as follows: Justine Gandy is an elementary school teacher with 18 children in her class. (This is where you know we’re in a movie because teachers in the real world have upwards of 25 per class.) 17 of those children go missing…all except on lone child—Alex. What’s even weirder, besides the child narration in the beginning, is the fact that at 2:17 am on a Wednesday morning, all these children left their house running with their arms out into the darkness never to be seen again.
Naturally, the parents are furious—but not at the right person. I could not get over the town being mad at the teacher. She had one students still come to class, so my mind says, if she did something to the class and assuming Alex comes to class every day, then why would he still be in class? Why would she even come to class the next day if she did something with the children? So that was dumb to me.
I love the format they chose. I always love movies that gives you the same scene but from someone else’s perspective. There’s so much you can so as a screenwriter and director in those instances that’s refreshing as a movie watcher. But and however, some of these perspective, mainly one, we didn’t really need. I’m talking about Paul. Yes, Paul was a police officer and had a run in with James which is how he got to the house, but his backstory wasn’t really needed. James neither, to be completely honest. I love the comedy we got from James, but the backstory’s we got from Paul and James didn’t tell us anything about Gladys or help us with the missing children. Sure, they ended up at the house for various reasons, but if we took that out of the film, we would have still gotten to the same place.
Speaking of unnecessary, let’s talk about this runtime. If you’re a regular here, you know I hate a movie that is long to be long, James Cameron. There was nothing in this movie that warranted two hours and eight minutes, and I mean nothing. For a long spell of the film, we had stopped looking for the students altogether because we stopped to tell the sad backstory of these random adults. And now that I mention that, they never gave us a backstory to the main villain in the film!! Most horror films I see at least give us some lore or some semblance of a backstory that explains the motivations. This movie did no such thing. If anything, it left me with crucial questions that needed answers. And no, Brittany, if they make a second one to give me the missing backstory, I’m not going to see it because now I no longer care what the backstory is.
With that being said, I couldn’t be scared or creeped out by the villain because the movie never answered any of my questions about them. Therefore, I was just confused about their existence in general.
The comedy is throughout the movie. Justine being accosted in the liquor store she frequents, Archer waking up from his nightmare, James…just James, Paul and his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and THAT ENDING!
The ending was where I questioned Britt and I’s sanity because the laugh that I shared with my best friend was unhinged. A scene like that should have been terrifying, but it was so funny! I now have to look into if this was supposed to be a new genre of horror.
What did you think about “Weapons?” Did the movie leave you with a bunch of burning questions like it did me?
