a review of 武器

While a perfectly competent and entertaining horror movie, I think its about the sum of its parts - or rather - I think some elements are more than the sum of their parts and some were less. I spent most of the movies run time thinking “this is about school shootings” and then not being able to square that with the villain or how it ends. So I looked it up and sure enough it wasn’t meant to be about that. Although it seems to be made in such a way to be open to interpretation, that is an interpretation that I don’t think really lands. On the flip side, an interpretation I hadn’t considered was a metaphor on addiction. And through that lens - the villain makes sense and tons and tons of other elements of the film come into place. Me and my roommates talked about how much therapy Alex was going to need and that really lines up with this view. However - I can’t figure out how to read the 17 kids then. Now maybe that’s because I can’t read - I don’t know - but it makes me quite hesitant to gas this movie up. It also doesn’t help this review that since I saw the climactic sequence as part of the oscars - I was not blown away but how batshit it was. Still quite good though don’t get me wrong.