Recommendations of the Editorial team
Spoiler receives the review.
“The mythology” of “Weapons – the hour of disappearance” is so great that it is all the more regret that it only became a good film (see also David Robert Mitchell’s “It Follow”). To one of the most successful needle drops of the past few years – George Harrison’s “Bewerre of Darkness” – races at 2:17 a.m. 17 children from their parents’ houses at night, purely at night and have been missing since then. Fear and paranoia spread among the small town residents.
Above all, the class teacher of the Lost Kids, Justine (Julia Garner), suffers from the hostility of the desperate parents. She had to have something to do with the disappearance of the 17 children.
Director Zach Gregger stages “Weapons” over long distances as an Alman Carver homage to “Short Cuts”, in which he connects different individual fates in Kurzepisodes, paired with the “Salem’s Lot”-like distrust of the people with each other, who must be involved in the case.
Questions, witches and horror quotes
As in his predecessor “Barbarian”, director Gregger has a third-act problem. Action and violence become decisive, the mythology appears to be under complex. This does not mean that the riddle would have needed an explanation. But it shouldn’t be forgotten either. Gregger at least underestimates the power of non-resolution. Why it can sometimes be very good that a disappearance of the children from the life of the adults does not require a reason, for example, the dismaying novels Paul Tremblays (“Disappearance at Devil’s Rock”).
Who is the child’s narrator? And what exactly does the witch want, what can it do, what can it not? Is your voodooast more powerful than you? The use of the Jump Scares also feels effective, but not necessary (but they are also extremely successful here in their classic structure, discomfort – research – relief – shock, extremely successful). In the end, Zach Gregger even stages a “Here’s Johnny!”-Homage, garnished with “Night of the Living Dead” zombies and the use of a potato peeler that could be remembered.
Also remember a funny “Willow” scold, Andy Warhol’s pasta doses, reminiscences of Roger-Moore-Bond films (fleeting plus pursuers crash into the quiet houses and leave the residents looking at a losslessly) and Alden Ehrenreich’s mustache. Ehrenreich is a really good actor – a shame that was dropped after “solo”.
Twist and new monster moves
Gregger tinkers from “Weapons” a pastiche from the best films in horror history, without being able to put together the individual elements into a whole that could appear like his own creation. Thankfully, the bad neumodic “elevated horror” aspect (monster as an allegory on psychological suffering) is thankfully little illuminated, here “grief” and the encapsulation of the outgrowed children from the parents’ house.
The sophisticated twist, the only sophisticated twist in “Weapons”, is in the title that literally takes things. It’s actually about weapons, not about escape. These children are sleepers. We will never know what in them, what is in our children.
But Zach Greggers can still be proud of himself. He invented a new running movement. Anyone who, from then on with the arms that are spread to the side, frightened to the front, will be recognized as “Weapon”. And spread fear. Inventing new monster moves has become almost impossible in the horror cinema.
Weapons-The hour of disappearance now as a premium download for borrowing and buying as well as from October 30th as 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment)