Commentary: ‘Weapons’ Never Capitalizes On Its Premise

Premises can serve many different purposes in a story. They can be used merely to tee up a plot and characters before they take the film in a completely different direction, or a premise can be used as a vehicle to explore interesting ideas and themes. One of Weapons strongest elements is its premise, which is heavily rooted in mystery, horror, and suspense. The film never explores it to its fullest potential. Instead, the story takes multiple detours and moves very slowly towards its climax. The result is a film that never quite rises to whatl its premise offers.

The main hook of Weapons: a class of children suddenly vanished willingly from their homes in the middle of the night. This kicks off the story and then follows several characters as the mystery unfolds. The drama mainly surrounds the children’s teacher, Justine (Julia Garner), who has to deal with the town’s anger as they take their frustrations out on her. However, the father of one of the boys, Archer (Josh Brolin), eventually works with her to discover that a woman named Gladys (Amy Madigan) uses magical mind control powers to bring the children to her home and has been hiding them in the basement.

Since this is a mystery, it makes sense to take a very slow burn approach. The suspense builds as bits and pieces are revealed. But the story also gets sidetracked as it focuses on characters outside of the main narrative. Eventually, Gladys is revealed to be the culprit, but even then, the children are never utilized in any way; they simply hide in the basement. A film titled Weapons about mind controlled children disappearing in the middle of the night promises a lot. It sets up the concept that these children will quite literally be used for some violent purpose. The story eventually does reach this point during it’s ruthless climax, but a huge portion of its runtime was spent tiptoeing around the mystery rather fully utilizing its premise.

Weapons is now in theaters.