If laughter is the best medicine, this gut-twisting tale of vanishing kids from American comedian-turned-horror auteur Zach Cregger comes with its own built-in cure.
Put simply, if Weapons wasn’t the best horror movie of the year – pipping even the mighty Sinners – it would probably be the best comedy. The last 30 minutes alone is hands down the most satisfying final reel I’ve winced through – and corpsed at – in absolutely ages, a whirlwind of laughs and scares that ties up the movie’s knotty narrative in a singular fashion.
Of course, Weapons is a less-you-know-the-better experience. Suffice to say, at 2.17am on an otherwise unremarkable night in the fictional US town of Maybrook, 17 classmates spontaneously get out of bed, leave their parents’ homes and run into the darkness, arms outspread like sycamore seedlings blown by some unseen tempest (in suitably macabre fashion, the pose was inspired by photojournalist Nick Ut’s legendary Vietnam War snap Napalm Girl).
When teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) turns up to class the next morning, there’s only one pupil to greet her: a taciturn boy called Cary (Alex Lilly). Is his silence down to shock or is there something else going on?
Who – or what – is the Pied Piper behind this bizarro event is the mystery that Weapons works its way towards in unhurried but enthralling fashion. Cregger’s camera sweeps, wraith-like, through a town whose shock is turning to anger and recrimination, with the besieged Gandy in the crosshairs. She’s an easy target as the parents’ witchhunt, led by Josh Brolin’s mad dad Archer Graff, spills over in a scene that plays like The Crucible in a community centre.
Not since Get Out has a horror movie packed this much playfulness and invention
But as with his giddy yet ghoulish horror breakthrough Barbarian, Cregger’s script always takes the unexpected path. Weapons gives six different perspectives on what follows: Gandy and Graff’s; Gandy’s ex (Alden Ehrenreich), a cop with whom she shares a history of alcoholism; local addict (Euphoria’s Austin Abrams, giving Jay from Mallrats); Benedict Wong’s well-intentioned headteacher; and finally Cary himself. It’s not a Rashomon move where you’re clocking subtle differences in perspective, but a 360-degree view of a community with a dark heart. Blue Velvet with jump shocks.
There’ll be moans from horrorheads that it’s not scary throughout, but in deepening his exploration of family life in the ‘burbs, Cregger sharpens his twisted scares to a dagger point. And the frights, when they come, really land. In one scene, Weapons manages to do for the backseats of sedans what Jaws did for the ocean.
It’s easy to see why another sketch-comic-turned-horror-auteur, Jordan Peele, threw everything at trying to win the rights to produce it. Not since his own debut Get Out has a horror movie packed this much playfulness and invention – and burrowed so far under your skin in the process.
In cinemas worldwide Fri Aug 8.