"Weapons" - Review

At 2:17AM, seventeen children rise from their beds in Maybrook, sprint away into the night, and disappear. As the town reels, attempts to make sense of it and come to terms with what has happened, they attempt to lay blame: every child was from a single classroom of new teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), and one child remains (Cary Christopher), clueless as to what happened. Wracked with grief and confusion, the town spirals, and we watch a dark mystery unfurl from multiple perspectives...

(Piture Credit: Bloody Disgusting)
I was so, so, so excited for this. Off the back of "Barbarian" (my second favourite film of that year), I was all too eager to see where the wild, unpredictable Zach Cregger would go.
Fucking hell yes.
Abso-fucking-lutely yes.
Told in a "Rashomon" style (an absolutely fantastic choice and creative idea) the film keeps that unpredictability and slipperiness of "Barbarian", as a mystery unfurls across several perspectives. The horror begins as a ruinously effective, somewhat bleak, human element: a town tears itself apart and delves into its base instincts, blaming innocent people, transforming it all into a witch hunt. It's great shit. And Cregger remains grounded not just in the human elements (Josh Brolin sleeping in his missing child's bed and screwing up at work, whilst his wife angrily tells him "she's going to work", cold and with a wedge driven between them by this tragedy) but in horror too: I was genuinely gripping my seat, unsure where it was going, what was going to happen, and driven to anxiousness by the simplicity of an average American suburbia draped in darkness and evil behind its walls, like a David Lynch painting shot by a documentarian. Is this person approaching Miss Gandy in a shop during an excruciating long take here as a grieving mother blaming her, or something far more dangerous?
It's excellent with the atmosphere, and flickers between 6 perspectives fluidly, crossing over and overlapping wonderfully, whilst ending each on a genuniely great "what the fuck?!" moment. I don't want to spoil too much, because the mystery is genuinely fun, though when it settles on a resolution, it loses steam in the 6th perspective and drags a little too long (it could have been halved) despite doing a good job delving into abuse and how it's behind closed doors, though the absolutely barmy and energetic 3rd act pulls it out of the bag and salvages it.
The performances are excellent across the board, and Cregger has a firm, solid, equally excellent grasp on characters: Garner plays Miss Gandy as a messy, kind of flawed and all-too-relatable human being; Josh Brolin is exceptional as the grieving father Archer Graff, who has a wonderful arc with Gandy and I ended up REALLY worried for him in the final act; Alden Ehrenreich (I'm happy he shows up!) plays a local cop and is great; and Benedict Wong man, Jesus fucking Christ... He'll haunt me forever. June Diane Raphael shows up too! Sweeeet! Toby Huss as well, in a cool supporting role.
It's great fun.

"Wolf Man" - Review

Blake (Christopher Abbott) finally receives news that his father has officially been declared dead. So he takes his wife (Julia Garner) and daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) to his old home in the woods, hoping to get away from it all and get his head together. But something attacks Blake in the woods and he begins to change. What could possibly be happening to him?

I like Leigh Whannell as a director: "Upgrade" is a phenomenally made low budget B-movie body horror nightmare, "The Invisible Man" did an excellent job updating its premise and having things to say (as well as using its low budget), the "Insidious" movies are bonkers good fun and remain of a relatively high consistency throughout (which is rare, particularly in horror series) and I enjoy "Death Sentence" for all of its unpleasantness, and "Cooties" is good fun. I was curious about this one, as he's not really had any duds thus far (the closest is maybe writing "Death Sentence", which is a rather ugly movie I remember enjoying, though a lot of people seem to slate "Dead Silence" and I am one of its few defenders even if Whannell doesn't), and "The Wolf Man" is a pretty difficult one to screw up, especially with the obvious readings you could add to it to make it a companion piece to "The Invisible Man" - rage and how it is a beast which changes men. Add to that Garner and Abbott and you have a slam dunk of a bottle movie!
Only, it's a dud.
It's infuriating to say that. The movie is called "The Wolf Man" so we know what he's going to turn into and what is happening, okay, fine, so you lean into the camp or the body horror. It does neither there, spending an inordinately long time in the cabin with a slow transformation. Okay, fine, it's about illness and how it transforms us and makes us monsters in the eyes of those we love. Again, no: the body horror angle is weak and underplayed (especially after stuff like "The Substance" in recent memory), so we have to hope it's going for a "confined in a tight space with the one you love as he turns violent" angle, but this too never reaches the tension it needs. The closest it comes is an attack atop a green house, but it's weak stuff, particularly if you compare it to stuff like "Crawl", "Hush", "Don't Breathe" and even the Soska Sisters' remake of "Rabid" (better body horror too in that case) in recent years alone. There is a token effort early on to hint at Blake maybe perhaps having rage issues, which could be the other metaphor they're going for, but again it's dropped and moved to the side in favour of their milquetoast locked room bottle movie. Thus we get a werewolf movie which takes too long to transform into a werewolf, loses the camp, fun and blood factor when it does, and isn't substantive and meaty enough or (crucially) tense and scary enough to sustain what is there, despite strong performances. I appreciated the "Ginger Snaps" reference with the daughter though, and that Benedict Hardie (the assassin from "Upgrade" and the job interviewer from "The Invisible Man") having another cameo in this as Whannell's mascot.
Honestly, if you wanted a great Abbott locked room horror film about change and violence, watch "Piercing".