Film: Weapons
Cast: Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, Amy Madigan.
Director: Zach Cregger
Rating: 3/5
Runtime: 128 min

‘Weapons’ is a fairly soporific horror mystery about a group of 17 elementary school classmates from a stable American community, who just up and vanish without a trace. Writer-director Zach Cregger explores the fear and anger, mostly directed at the teachers and the lone survivor, that consume the community of a Pennsylvania town called Maybrook after the incident.

The movie begins at 2:17 a.m. on a school night, when 17 children get out of bed, open their front doors, run out into the night, and vanish into the blue. They are all students in Justine Gandy’s third-grade class, of which only shy boy Alex is the bewildered lone survivor now. Don’t know why he was spared and the town’s angry parents are just as bewildered about that. In the painful aftermath, parents look for answers, consolation and someone to blame. The mass disappearance, in fact, turns the mild-mannered parents into an angry mob. Hot-tempered Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), whose son Matt has gone missing, stands up at a school meeting and implicates Justine (Julia Garner), demanding to know what the teacher did to their kids. That charge leads to a flurry of fears and phobias getting exposed. Are the school personnel and policies brainwashing their kids?

Cregger divides the film into six chapters, focusing on six people, and telling it in their perspective. Each story rewinds scenes repeatedly in a new perspective with new insights. Beginning with the teacher Justine, then Archer, followed by a cop(Alden Ehrenreich), the school administrator (Benedict Wong) and two others. As each point of view is represented, the pieces begin to fit together. We see glimpses of a clownish face and much later the arrival of the repulsive aunt Gladys.