New Witch in Town - Reviewing 'Weapons'

As with each of my film reviews, I certainly will talk about spoilers here, so go and watch the movie first, then come back and let's discuss this film!

 

So we're in the middle of the Fantasy Filmfest fever with lots of great sounding movies coming our way, but there have been lots of good horror movies showing in regular movies too, and it's time I address them in a series of posts here. Weapons is the first movie I want to discuss because I was smitten with it, although I would not give it the 100% it allegedly got on Rotten Tomatoes.

 

We start off with a mystery; at 2.17 am on a given night, all children from one single class at Maybrook Elementary School disappear, except for one little boy, Alex. They just wake up in the middle of the night, open the door and make that Naruto run for an unknown place. (I have to say at this point that I don't get this running gesture, the Naruto run, and it's one of my critique points that it looks just a little bit ridiculous, but ultimately it's the choice of the director, for whatever reason.) 

 

The movie is narrated in non-linear manner and divided into six points of view: school teacher Justine (whose class disappeared except for Alex), Archer the father of one of the kids (Matthew, who happens to be Alex' bully), Paul the policeman, James the burglar, Marcus the school principal, and finally Alex the little boy who didn't disappear with his class. Each character's point of view starts a little earlier than where the previous character's vantage point ends and pushes the story just a little further with each new person. This is a hell of a way to present and solve a mystery and I have to say I was mesmerized, especially considering the villain of the story making her entrance as late as the penultimate point of viewer's, Marcus', story.

 

When all the children go missing, of course, the townsfolk blames the teacher as it seems natural to assume it's the only common denominator. She is being threatened, she is being called a witch, but she is not. She is only a teacher who wants to solve the puzzle of her missing students, and she starts snooping at the house of the only other person involved in the mystery, Alex. What she finds at his house, is unsettling at best, bat shit scary at worst.

 

Archer, on the other hand, is grief stricken. His son is gone and he does something I like characters doing in films and books - he does his own research and finds an intersection point. His path crosses that of Justine, whom he holds accountable in the beginning, but his view on that changes. Similarly the history of the town's cop Paul and the burglar James whom he chases comes together to build a unit of its own. The last two points of view, those of school principal Marcus in which we meet villain Gladys for the first time in person, and that of Alex are more individually stand-alone kind of perspectives, with Alex being the key to the riddle. And the riddle goes back to Gladys - a dying witch who is trying to prolong her lifetime and uses Alex' parents' and the school children's energy to that end.

 

Weapons came as a pleasant surprise to me, as I wasn't expecting a solid, very good horror movie at this point of the year, but I welcome the occasion. The fragmented narration style can be a sure way to suck in an audience and director Cregger does everything right here because I was hooked like a fish. It is Weapons' biggest strength, especially the little repetition of an event from a different POV and the extensions to the beginning and end to each fragment that goes beyond the former story.

As a horror veteran, I regret to say that nowadays few things actually scare me. I mainly keep watching horror because I'm used to it, it has become my way of expression, my normal and I enjoy transgressive fiction, which is hard to find in any other genre. So I'm thrilled when I find a movie which can genuinely give me the creeps or at least move me, and the jump scares in Weapons were so well done that they startled me, specifically the scenes when Justine and Archer both separately wake up in the middle of the night (something which frequently happens to me) and see the illusion of Gladys reaching out to them. Now, the sight of Gladys is quite something of its own: her extreme makeup, the exaggeration of artificiality, much like in Longlegs, combined with that creepy smile placed in that most vulnerable of all time, the waking hour when everything else sleeps, the wolf hour, in this case the witching hour, was unbearably terrifying, because the environment, the setting was so real. I dare claim we all have waken up in the middle of the night, eavesdropping in the dead silence, expecting to hear something - which luckily never comes. But what if it does come and it sounds like Gladys cackling? Shivers running down my spine.

Talking about Gladys the Witch; it can't be stressed enough how awesome it is the director chose an actress who reflects the actual age of the character, which means a woman who is not young anymore to play the role of an aging witch in contrast to all the ridiculous, artificially mask-generated witches played by young women. Beside the fact that it generates workplaces for people of a certain age, it was so much more realistic and authentic to see an older woman in the role of an older woman. Kudos for that.

The fact that the origin, speak, the backstory of Gladys is unknown, might have been a turn-off for some viewers, but not for me. I took this film as an extract in the life of these people, and the mystery of it all gave it realism in my opinion. When a tragedy happens in real life, say someone attacks you violently or robs you or someone is killed, there is, in the fewest of cases an explanation as to why that happens to you. You know how in movies and books the murderer stops before their last murder to explain themselves to their last victim, yeah that's bullshit. If the case is big enough some investigator or journalist will dig into it but otherwise, nope! Things happen and if you're lucky enough to survive you just try and go on with your life. In that sense I love how Weapons imitates life, there are enough fantastic elements here and the people of the town miraculously finding out the origin story of their villain is not one. And you know what? That's fine. (edit: I've just read that Warner Bros is considering a prequel... Please don't.)

The perfection that the movie displays in its form, scares, structure and vibe (which, by the way, reminded me of Longlegs) unfortunately doesn't extend to the story, and veils a weak substance underneath all its assets. The story, the motive of Gladys the Witch is bafflingly simple: in a bid to survive she just grabs whatever straw she can grasp and in this case it is the town of Maybrook. It could have been any other small town. I may have wished a more intricate and complex level of intrigues, maybe a playing out of townsfolk against each other, like in Needful Things or The Auctioneer, a little more cunning. Despite all her trickery, Gladys is boringly straightforward and unfancy - she wants it, she finds a way to get it. My personal taste favors a little more slyness, a little more art. Despite all this, it's refreshing to have found a witch who is through and through evil. In fiction, the witch trope is usually associated with some kind of feminist background, witches become witches because they have been running from some kind of misogynistic social structure, some restraint, and they find freedom to live in being completely out of society, among their likes, in being a woman scorned. I like this aspect but I'm also very ready to go along with a witch who acts self-servingly and egoistically without any undertones to justify it. She's a bad bitch for the heck of it, so what? 

Lastly, there's the situation of Alex, and children in general. Newspapers reported last year of a 9-year-old boy in Nersac, France, who lived alone for two years in an unheated apartment after his mom found a new boyfriend with whom she started living, and checked on him from time to time. He was a good student and always washed and clean, so nobody bothered looking after him. Alex in the film goes through a similar ordeal in which he needs to be the feeder of not only his parents, but also every other child in his class, even his bullies. He's so alone, and the only person close to him is this one person he's terrified of. I actually do think that the film touches on the fate of neglected children, and how they can easily be pulled into trouble or be open to bad  influences and dangerous people. I felt for Alex and wished him a better ending than what he got. The protection of children is an overall prevalent theme in Weapons, there are numerous theories online about school shootings for instance, but not being from the US, the complexity of that discussion is beyond me.

All in all, Weapons was a nice surprise for me I didn't see coming, and although I think it has its issues, and I don't think the 100% Rotten Tomatoes score is justified, it is very much worthwhile and calls you to the cinema, so go immediately if you haven't seen it yet!