When preparing my review for Eddington, I couldn’t remember the bizarrely specific Pokémon-themed name that was going to be given to the AI data center being built outside of the titular town. In searching for a script for it online in order to get this name, I stumbled across a Reddit post that contained the screenplay for both that film and Weapons, and I inadvertently read a spoiler about Weapons in the beginning of the post before I could click away. To be honest, I didn’t believe it when I read it. It seemed like too much of a departure from what the advertising had presented, and I couldn’t reconcile the images that were already rattling around in my head from the trailers with the spoiler, let alone with the discourse already surrounding the film, all of which had firmly already centered itself around (pre)reading the “disappeared kids” narrative as being a school shooting metaphor. The spoiler didn’t ruin the overall experience for me, but it did mean that I knew what the motivation was behind the film’s events before the film revealed itself, and I wish that I could have experienced this for the first time without that foreknowledge. 

The film’s poster tagline is also part of its opening narration: “[One] night, at 2:17 am, [almost] every child from Mrs. Gandy’s class woke up, got out of bed, went downstairs, opened the front door, walked into the dark … and never came back.” We see this first school day with most of Justine Gandy (Julia Garner)’s class having failed to show up, all except for timid Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher). A month later, there are still no clues as to the children’s location, and the community is still in a state of perpetual outcry, with particularly outspoken local contractor Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) calling for Justine’s arrest until she can explain what happened, a conflict that Principal Marcus Miller (Benedict Wong) attempts to prevent from escalating. We learn that Justine has had previous trouble with alcoholism and that this event has led her to drowning her sorrows once again, which leads her to have a one-night stand with an old ex, police officer Paul Morgan (Alden Ehrenreich). Based on the pre-release information we had, one would assume that Justine would be our sole main character as we follow her along her investigation into the disappearance of her students (or that perhaps she is responsible and that the film will focus on Archer’s discovery of the extent of her involvement), but the film takes a different narrative approach, instead breaking its story into multiple sections that each focus on one character. 

Justine’s is first, of course, so that we can watch her struggle with facing the community of Maybrook while having no more answers to the children’s disappearance than they do, up to the point when she’s attacked by an apparently possessed friend, at which point the film then switches points of view to follow Archer. We see him waking up in the bed of his missing son, apparently regretting all the love he failed to show the boy when he had the chance (as we see later in Alex’s point of view section, Archer’s son Matthew is an outright bully, perhaps because of this lack of affection). He’s losing track of things at work, placing wrong orders and forgetting others entirely, and this scattered thinking can only refocus on one target: Justine. He’s frustrated with what he feels is insufficient investigation on the part of police captain Ed (Toby Huss), so he begins to follow Justine and vandalizes her car, but he comes to see that she’s just as lost in all of this as he is. I don’t want to get into all of the ins and outs of what we learn from each of these intersections between the character-focused sections because they’re much more interesting to see play out non-linearly, almost Magnolia style (which director Zach Cregger has admitted is an inspiration), before they weave into one another. It makes the whole thing feel grounded, filling in little realistic details through naturalistic dialogue — conversations about the excitement of coming home early from a business trip because it means that you’ll be home when you’re ovulating, Archer’s wife’s exasperated “I’m going to work” when she finds him asleep in missing Matthew’s room yet again, and the way that homeless addict James (Austin Abrams) spins a threadbare web of transparent but plausible lies to try and extort tiny bits of cash from friends still willing to take a call from him. There are large swathes of the film where you’ll completely forget that there’s a potentially supernatural mystery at play here because you’ll be more invested in the lives of the characters. That’s good filmmaking, baby. 

Weapons is doing pretty well on the discourse circuit. The film’s barely been out for a couple of days as I write this (on the Monday after the film’s release, having seen it in a packed theater Friday evening), and there are already many different takes on the film’s themes. I barely looked at social media today and saw more than a dozen memes about the meal that Marcus and his husband have prepared for their TV time (it includes seven hot dogs, ruffled potato chips, baby carrots, an ungodly amount of what I presume is ranch dressing, and chocolate chip cookies — iconic), and YouTuber Ryan Hollinger has already put out a video in which he claims that the film’s overall thesis is about alcoholism (even though I don’t completely agree with his analysis). Although alcoholism and addiction in general are running themes through the film, I think that the presence of these diseases is more about showing character through the ways that addiction can compel people to be the worst version of themselves. That compulsion isn’t limited to drinking or shooting up, though, as we see with Archer and how his vandalism and lack of focus are the result of his grief. If anything, the film is about parasitism and the way that parasites can compel their hosts, with addictive compulsion (i.e. the proverbial monkey on one’s back), sexual impulsivity, and grief themselves acting as metaphors for having a parasite that controls you, as the film’s villainous force does. I won’t say more than that to save you from being spoiled the way that I was. 

In discussion about the film over the weekend, a friend brought up that one critic’s complaint was that Cregger will always opt to go for a joke rather than a scare, and while I think that’s an oversimplification of the director’s style, I also don’t think it’s inaccurate, and even if it were, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. This is a movie about children disappearing, parents bereft of answers, communities in mourning, leaders navigating grief and expectations, and finding solace in feeding one’s diseases while also being very, very funny. Sometimes, Cregger will just throw in a little piece of weirdness just for the hell of it (the giant floating AR-15 with 2:17 shining out of it in LED alarm clock letters being the most obvious example), and that’s also a delight. It’s a rich vein for evaluation and re-evaluation, and I could possibly be enticed to see this one a second time while it’s in theaters. Recapitulating the jokes would be just as bad as giving away the ending (which is itself very cathartic and bloodily hilarious), so I’ll just give this one a whole-hearted recommendation and send you on your way, dear reader. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond