IF you enjoy slow paced movies with dark humour and a side of gore, then you will love Zach Creager’s mystery horror film Weapons.
The movie takes the audience through multiple characters perspectives and provides viewers the opportunity to understand each of the characters better.
Weapons opens with a moving shot of Maybrook Elementary School, a young boy’s voice can be heard over the top of the scene, reflecting on the events that took place one month prior to the beginning of the movie.
According to the narrator, at exactly 2.17am, 17 children from the same class ran out of their homes, into the darkness and “never came back”.
The next scene follows Ms Gandy (Julian Garner) entering her classroom only to discover it empty, except for one.
Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher) is sitting quietly in his seat.
Alex is apparently the only child in his class who didn’t run away into the forest that night, and the town is left stunned as to where the missing kids went and why only one child from that class remains.
Since the movie’s release, Weapons has earned itself a 95 per cent Rotten Tomatoes score from film reviews and an impressive rating of 90 per cent overall.
The film’s slow pace allows the audience to gradually piece together what occurred that night and despite the film having a runtime of over two hours, the storytelling helps build up suspense, grabbing the audience’s attention and not letting go.
The actors and actresses did an incredible job bringing depth to each character and showcasing all of their emotions perfectly, bringing every character to life.
The lighting and visual craft was flawlessly executed, allowing for simple yet mysterious shots of each character and building up the suspense for each action scene.
The darkness the doors create whenever they’re opened creates an eerie and uncomfortable feeling, setting the mood for the rest of the film.
However, regardless of all the positive media and reviews the film is getting, theatregoers are still unhappy about one thing.
The middle block of the movie dragged out for far too long.
While the storytelling for the beginning of the movie and last half an hour was action-packed and kept the audiences’ attention, the middle hour of the movie was filled with flashbacks that didn’t add anything to the movie and dark humour that just didn’t hit its mark.
I was also left with multiple unanswered questions.
Overall, the delivery of the acting and cinematography was outstanding, however, the writing and pacing just dragged the movie down.
Zach Cregger faced similar criticism for his first horror thriller film Barbarian, with many reviews complaining that the movie was great for the first 40 minutes but was paced out horribly after that.
Despite the thousands of reviews criticising the pacing of both movies, the positive reviews still outweigh the negatives.
The concept of Weapons was unique and interesting, with twists you couldn’t see coming and an action-packed ending.
