Weapons

Seventeen children get out of bed at 2.17 in the morning, run out of their front doors with their arms held back, and do not come back. One child in the class stays.

Zach Cregger structures it as overlapping chapters, each following a different character through the same period, and the device pays off because each one has information the last did not and the picture assembles rather than being explained.

The opening, narrated by a child over footage of the empty houses, sets a fairy-tale register the film keeps.

Cregger has said it came out of his own grief, and the film is about a community looking for somebody to blame, which it finds in the teacher.

The last act delivers an answer that is much sillier than the setup and much more entertaining than a serious one would have been.

Julia Garner and Josh Brolin are both excellent.