Weapons centers on the disappearance of 17 third-grade students in Maybrook, Pa., who leave their homes at 2:17 a.m., leaving one shy boy named Alex as the sole classmate who remains. Julia Garner plays Justine, the teacher who becomes the target of angry parents' suspicion at a school meeting. The film unfolds through multiple perspectives and replays events from new angles, revealing the dark underbelly of American suburbia. The movie evokes classic horror and The Pied Piper, combining campfire-tale spookiness with unpredictable surprises and moral complexity, expanding on Cregger's previous work, Barbarian.
As I emerged from a showing of Weapons at my local multiplex on Saturday night, I saw a teenager running around the lobby, his arms extended downward and outward to the great amusement of his friends. "You're going to see a lot of kids running like that on Halloween," I heard someone say, and I think he was right. Weapons has been in theatres for just two weeks, and it's already given us an unshakably memorable image:
It begins with an unseen, unidentified young girl, telling us about strange events that happened in the town of Maybrook, Pa. One Wednesday, at exactly 2:17 a.m., 17 children get out of their beds, walk out their front doors, and disappear into the night. All 17 children are students in the same third-grade class; the only classmate who doesn't vanish is a shy boy named Alex, played by a very good Cary Christopher.
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