Weapons

15

Nobody really needs my take on this movie. To be certain. And yet… I feel compelled to give it. Only because, despite not typically being my genre, it feels like one of those old-school thinkers that makes me love movies. An admittedly weird film that doesn’t really square the circle or know what it is from one moment to the next, but speaks to something in my moviegoing soul that makes me now want to go watch Zach Cregger’s Barbarian. Which, honestly, is a movie that’s been sitting in my queue for a few years now just pinging every time I scroll past it. Because, despite Weapons being a bit of an all-over-the-place experience, those pieces all make for a wonderfully crazy time that I very much enjoyed in the same way I enjoyed those incredibly self-aware genre-mash-up episodes of X-Files back in the day.

Look, I’m not here to be a salesperson for this thing. It doesn’t need my help. It made $270 million on a $38 million budget. I think that might be a pretty good ROI. Amy Madigan won an Academy Award for best supporting actress and I’m pretty sure this made lots of end-of-the-year best movie lists. But I also do want to sell this thing to people who aren’t necessarily horror fans. The same way I might sell The Babadook or something more psychologically messed up than scary. Granted, I don’t watch a ton of horror — not much at all, really. No Saw, or the 27th installment of Friday the 13th. None of that. Masked or mindless killers who kill just to kill don’t interest me. Granted, I’m sure that dude in Saw has some reason for his whole torture porn thing, but I hoestly don’t care to look into it. No thanks.

Normally I’m also not a “witch” guy. I watched Agatha All Along and want to cleanse my eyeballs with lye. There was a season of American Horror Story about a coven in New Orleans starring Stevie Nicks for some reason that was horrendous. The Blair Witch was good — probably because there’s pretty much no witch in the witch movie — but otherwise I generally just don’t love the whole supernatural drama, magic nonsense of the witch thing. But here we are with a woman winning an Oscar for playing a witch. In a movie that I very much enjoyed. I’m either becoming soft in my old age or perhaps Cregger’s more modern spin on the thing killed the whole Salem flashback nonsense that is almost always employed in these things. And instead made Madigan’s Aunt Gladys character feel more like an evil Uncle Buck than some ancient creature who has somehow made her way from 1600s Massachusetts to modern-day suburban Pennsylvania. Granted, this isn’t a film about witches at all. It’s about… Well, frankly, I’m not sure what it’s about. And listening to Cregger talk about it didn’t really help me understand. There is a point where a giant rifle with a flashing time on it appears in the sky. While watching it, I clocked it but was mostly confused about its inclusion. The Internet told me the movie is an allegory about school shootings because of this weird sky-gun. But, nah, that’s not really what Cregger said. Honestly, his response only confused things more. Which is totally fine for me given the fact the entire film is just one giant crazy-pants romp that is left open to interpretation.

I do realize, of course, there are Easter eggs and whatnot in this film. And symbolism. And something having to do with one of Cregger’s dead friends — who apparently fell to his death from a balcony while intoxicated. Represented in Julia Garner’s alcoholic teacher character. Or Alden Ehrenreich’s drunk cop. Or, perhap, Aunt Gladys and her control over the inhabitants of the town is the booze and everyone else is the co-dependent victim of its pull. But probably not. The point is, there is a lot of ambiguity as to what the message is here. Or if there is one at all. But the overlapping narrative — basically telling perspective stories of several characters leading up to and after the disappearance of an entire classroom (save one) of children — both comes together and doesn’t come together in the most entertaining way. And this is where I’d normally criticize timelines and some of the clunkiness of the plotting, but in this case I just don’t care. It’s a little messy, and somehow it still works. The final set piece action scene (if you can call it that) is honestly one of the most exhilarating and funny things I’ve seen in quite a while. A mashup of the Ferris Bueller running-home scene, the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” video and, weirdly, the final fight scene from Lethal Weapon, it just jolts the senses in the best possible way and had me gawping and laughing simultaneously. It’s an incredible capper from a movie that constantly zags and twists in the zaniest of ways.

I know I said you wouldn’t care about my take. Or shouldn’t. So I won’t pose one. This movie is incredibly entertaining. Which I suppose is a take, but is really more of an observation. Or a feeling. Cregger manages to inject this thing with enough action and surprising gross-outs and jumps to keep you guessing. But there is also the underlying humor and strangeness of it all that makes it different. Sure, Madigan sits there at the dinner table threatening a child to obey by making his parents stab themselves in the face repeatedly with their forks. And, sure, that same clown-faced woman shows up to his parent-teacher conference claiming to be his aunt and everyone just kind of goes with it because you’re just not allowed to ask questions these days. And, yes, Benedict Wong, with an entirely mushed skull and bugged out eyes, comes running toward Garner and Josh Brolin’s characters looking like a demented Panic Pete squeeze toy from hell and it’s incredibly hysterical. Which all goes to say that I’m not sure that this type of humor would be injected into a film that is strictly about school shootings. Or Cregger’s dead friend. So, I took it for what it is: a very fun, off-kilter piece of media whose chaos, and even some of its faults, add up to something both artful and organic that didn’t feel like it was shat out of some AI machine or Hollywood note session.