Weapons Review (Spoiler Free)

My boyfriend doesn’t do scary movies. I still feel bad for bringing him to see Smile and that was about three years ago. But seeing Weapons was largely his decision. His interest was piqued by a rather unique plot and mostly positive reviews. So on Saturday we settled in with a large popcorn in the last row of the theater and saw the movie. And here are some of my thoughts.

Weapons, on the surface, is about a classroom of seventeen students that just vanish into the night at 2:17 in the morning. All except one boy, Alex. I was surprised they didn’t scrutinize Alex and his home life more closely but no one consulted me. The teacher, Justine,is as clueless as all the parents yet she is the object  of a witchhunt. The principal of the school even lets her go to appease the angry parents who believe she must be involved in the disappearances. 

First off, the characters were fairly well developed. There weren’t many tropes. The main character (Justine) cares about her children at the risk of caring too much. She has a checkered past of becoming too involved in the lives of her students. She also has a drinking problem and she encourages her ex, Paul who is a police officer working on the case, to break his sobriety and drink too (his current girlfriend is enraged). 

The story is also told from different characters perspectives. You could watch a scene from one character’s POV and then see it from a different one. Slowly the story unfolds, bits of mystery becoming solved as it unravels. At one point one of the characters (Archer, the father of one of the missing children) sees a huge gun in the sky in a dream sequence. My boyfriend researched this part of the movie. He says there is a theory that it is a reference to the Parkland Shooting which took place in February and also resulted in the death of seventeen children. 

As far as the scare factor goes, there are several jump scares, usually in dream sequences where it is dark. There is also other unsettling content which I’m not going to reveal because it would give away crucial plot information. There isn’t much gore. My boyfriend was worried about a scene involving a potato peeler but that was practically nothing. The last horror movie I saw was Smile 2 and this is much much more tame. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a good movie or not worth seeing. I found the experience to be like reading a book because it had so many different viewpoints inside it yet it’s not confusing. .  It’s high praise. I do recommend this movie for scary movie lovers because it is very nuanced and well developed, something I do regret most horror movies are not. Over your classic slasher I’ll take mystery any day.