A great and terrifying horror film: NPR

In the prologue of the 1983 cinematic adaptation of The twilight zoneTwo men, played by Albert Brooks and Dan Aykroyd, lead along a highway at night. They talk about The twilight zone And what episodes they think they are the most scary. Then Aykroyd asks with playful in Brooks: “Do you want to see something Really Scary? “” You bet, “says Brooks, and Aykroyd says he has to stop – it will just take a minute. They stop. A joyful Aykroyd turns turns and hides his face while Brooks, smiling, waits for everything that eats.

It is not a very good film, but it is a big dark joke, because the world in which we speak philosophically of frightening things is supposed to be separated from the world in which the most frightening things happen. This is one of the things that horror does; It allows people to treat the most frightening things that could happen while remaining safe themselves. All adrenaline without risk. This scene in The twilight zone is disturbing because, like meta horror films like ShoutThis allows someone who likes to be afraid of an abduction to be suddenly afraid for real.

The paradox of fear is that even if it is supposed to make you run, the feeling itself can be attractive if you think you can get away with it. When I saw the first trailer for WeaponsThe most recent film of the writer-director Zach Cregger (which made the success Barbarous), I immediately thought: “It looks completely terrifying, and I want to see it.” In other words, Congger said, “Do you want to see something Really Scary? “And I said,” You bet. “”

The film begins with something that seems impossible: one night, in the suburbs of Maybrook, each student (except one) of the third year class of Justine Gandy rises at 2:17, descends, goes down, leaves the house and fled silently in the night. They left, 17 of them. They are taken on doorbell cameras or security cameras, disappearing in the woods or just in darkness.

The suspicion falls on Justine (Julia Garner), for the simple reason that no one can understand how these children could disappear unless something happens in this classroom, on her watch. Have they been forced to run away? Convinced? Was there a kind of plan? She says no, she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know. The only boy who remains, Alex (Cary Christopher), offers no answer either. Archer (Josh Brolin), the father of one of the missing children, tirelessly tracks Justine between the nights spent sleeping in the abandoned bed of his son. Local police officer Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), the local disturbance hassle James (Austin Abrams), and the director of the Marcus school (Benedict Wong) also becomes involuntarily entangled in history.

In large part, a bit like the 2014 HBO series The remains And the novel that inspired him, Weapons is a story of a community that recalls an inexplicable trauma that arrives like a natural disaster, wreaking havoc, and can not then be reversed, has only survive. There is blame, there is guilt, there is sorrow, and there is a deep feeling of isolation for Alex, Archer and Justine in particular. How do they start to talk about it?

But there is another thing, another that happens in this story, that I would not spoil anything, because it is simply too frightening and strange. What I will say is only that the film develops such a brutally effective tension that at one point, the guy seated next to me has unintentionally surprised outwards, firmly pressing his arm on my side for about two seconds, then whispered, “my bad”. I whispered, “No, no, I understand.”

One of the things Weapons is so good in never counting on a single horror note, but using the whole orchestra of fear. Is there a fear, as you feel when a baby-sitter in a Slasher film decides to descend into the basement alone? Yes. Are there moments that feel fakeEven if they are not really terrifying intrinsically? Yes.

He has the kind of jump where something that was not there before entered space. He has the kind of jump jump where something that is there all the time enters the frame. He has the moment when a threat is concentrated from afar and you whisper “oh, oh, what’s going on there, oh, no.” This will make you go “Eeeeeeeee-yuc” and pose to a pursuit, and laugh the little laugh slightly guilty of a moment of chaos that borders the slapstick. It will show you a sharp object and you will see the future of this object.

If you see Weapons With a noisy crowd, what you should, and if you all forgive yourself and you to react in voice not. “”

I left the theater not to a monster in the passenger seat, and not to comfort, but to more banal concerns: for my own security, for the safety and the safety of others, for the future.

On the other hand, if one of your fears comes down to worrying about the cinema itself, there is something reassuring about the way in which personal horror can be, to grow your pimples by its creatives. Whether this kind of story attracts you or not, it is a film that, like Ryan Coogler Sinnerssuggests that horror is a genre where the vision of a filmmaker can still feel specific and dynamic. You don’t need an algorithm but the fears and losses of a respirating person, like Dan Aykroyd The twilight zoneGive yourself the fear that you really don’t see coming.

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