Weapons

Finally some good fucking modern horror movie I have to say, with all my positive feelings around this movie, everything I feel positive is doubly so because Weapons is a film by a director I'm fairly unfamiliar with and this didn't have any association with a household horror production/distribution company. No a24, no NEON, no Blumhouse. I walked into this fairly blind, I intended to see it in theaters but didn't have the time and really wish that I had that time now. From the jump, I felt like this movie knew it had me in its clutches. This is my favorite Julia Garner role I've seen to this point, her character feels like a real person, sweet to kids and good at her job, but messy behind the scenes. A tough person to read. I think a lot of what makes this movie work is epitomized in the first jumpscare of the flick. To this point, there have been no jumpscares, we've gotten close but nothing so far. Justine is in bed and hears some thudding, and is obviously very skeptical sitting up in bed. Nothing happens. The audience is still on guard, it's too quiet in this scene for nothing to happen, but the frame composition doesn't really lend to a jumpscare opportunity. I can see too much, and there's no room for someone to pop up. Suddenly and against my will, as Justine is laying her head back down, the camera has switched to a POV perspective. This hasn't happened in the movie yet. I don't know this, as an audience member, to be something that could happen. I didn't know I could move like that. As my perspective falls backwards, this fucked up looking thing is literally poked halfway through the ceiling and the musical sting hits. All this combined together has thoroughly set me off balance and created an earned jumpscare. That shit got me 100%. And Weapons is excellent at creating and defying expectations. It feels like for most of the movie, anything could be the solution and as we get closer to the end of the film, when all the cards are laid on the table, I still don't know what's going to happen. Weapons doesn't thrive on keeping itself elevated from the audience, it wants to tell you everything it can to keep you unsettled. And by the wrap up of the movie, we have FINALLY ascended to the mountaintop of a modern horror movie with a cool premise that ACTUALLY KNOWS HOW TO TIE UP THE ENDING. It's not a perfect or necessarily happy ending, it's the ending that makes sense and it's cathartic in its imperfection. I could say a lot more, but I'll hold off. Absolutely one of my favorite watches this year.