Weapons

Plot

At 2.17am one night, in a class of eighteen children, all but one child mysteriously ran off into the night – never to be seen again.

Was it the fault of the young teacher Ms Justine Gandy? Or is something more sinister at play?

Direction

Directed by Zach Cregger – who directed 2022’s Barbarian (which is now on my to watch list). There is some great use of colouring, which adds to the discomfort of what the audiences is witnessing. I also loved the long take near the end where the camera follows two characters as they go through a series of areas (without giving too much away!).

Cinematography was by Larkin Seiple (who worked on Everything Everywhere all at Once).

Cast/Characters

There is a solid cast behind this, and is told in six ‘parts’

The six characters are;

Justine Gandy (played by Julia Garner), who is the teacher of the class who goes missing. She is a loving teacher who goes above and beyond, despite the warnings from her superiors. She has a slight drinking problem, and is having an affair with her ex boyfriend.

Archer Graff (played by Josh Brolin), is one of the parents of the missing boys – Matthew. He is desperate for answers, first believing Justine had something to do with it, but his investigations lead him otherwise.

Paul Morgan (played by Alden Ehrenreich) is one of the police officers in the town. His father in law is also the chief of police, and he is having an affair with his ex girlfriend Justine. He often picks on one of the local homeless drug addicts.

James (played by Austin Abrambs) is a local homeless drug addict, who is often bullied by Paul, the local police officer. During one of his quests to find something to steal, he stumbles onto a home that holds the secret to the whereabouts of the missing children.

Benedict Wong plays Marcus, Justine’s principal, who warns her about being too close to her students. He has a rather gruesome encounter at one stage with the person responsible for the missing children.

Alex Lilly (played by Cary Christopher) is the only student who didn’t go missing. His backstory is shown when his mysterious Great Aunt Gladys comes to visit. She very quickly inserts her presence in his home – and is desperate to thwart off the cancer that she has.

Other characters within the town include (and those who play them), Toby Huss ass Ed Locke, the chief of police, and Amy Madigan as Gladys – Alex’s great aunt who *** spoiler *** is the one who caused all the children to go missing!

Breakdown

Interesting in both the situation, and how it unfolds on screen – where we quickly learn about (almost an) entire class of students who go missing from the class of Justine Gandy (played by the almost always delivers Julia Garner).

The film goes over six points of view (as mentioned earlier) where we see how the event has affected each of these people. Justine and Archer are affected the most as it was Justine’s class – and the town blame her for what happened, often targeting her and her property.

As the film does follow six different stories, at times some of the ‘points of view’ does overlap with one another – and this can become a tad repetitive at times. There are also a small handful of moments that are included (the moment between Justine and Donna, Paul’s wife) and the tension between Paul and James – that don’t really feel like they add much to the plot.

For most of the characters, through their ‘arc’ they have visions of a mysterious woman (who becomes a vital part of the narrative later in the film). She is seen to be an overly dressed older woman, with large glasses and clown like hair. She of course is Gladys, played brilliantly by Amy Madigan (who scored an Oscar nomination for her work).

The character of Gladys, who we’re finally fully introduced to in Part 5 – Marcus makes her one frightening antagonist, as she very quickly administers her power over them (poor Terry).

We get more of her in Part 6 – Alex – where we discover the why, and the how of what happened to the children, before during… and after (which is darkly hilarious and graphic in nature).

What starts as part of the overall theory of the ‘incident’ – where all the children disappear at 2.17am – and certain characters dream with clocks at the same time, come down to nothing more than a coincidence. There is no ‘greater meaning’ to it, other than ‘that’s just the time’ it happens… which is both frustrating, and brilliantly written. It could also be argued that there is more to 2.17 than this (such as political/biblical/historical/ etc according to some online articles).

Gladys’ motive (which is revealed in Part 6) is somewhat human, despite her doing ‘inhumane’ things to those to get what she wants.

Overall

Solid thriller that starts with a unique mystery, that slowly gives you the pieces throughout. The intertwined stories of all the characters is an interesting choice, but at times gets somewhat repetitive, and other times story points either don’t go anywhere or aren’t really necessary.

The performances are all stellar, but it is especially Madigan who delivers a career best performance as Gladys, which secured her an Oscar win.

A solid recommend.

4/5

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