HORROR; 2hr 8min
STARRING: Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Amy Madigan
Fear factor: Garner
After 17 kids from the same Pennsylvania grade-three class disappear one night, bolting en masse into the proverbial blue, their horrified teacher (Garner, vibrating in knife-edge mode as Justine Gandy) is an instant pariah. With the notable exception of one sad little boy (Christopher as Alex), Justine’s entire primary-school class has gone missing, leaving their parents frantic and furious. Why wouldn’t they be? Boozehound Justine is a smidge frantic as well, which leads her to make such flat-out stupid moves as bedding her police officer ex (Ehrenreich as Paul) and lurking outside Alex’s distinctly creepy home.
Studly builder and furious, frantic dad Archer Graff (Brolin) is next up for a once-over from writer-director Zach Cregger’s brilliantly nauseating chiller. Unimpressed with law enforcement’s zero results, Archer decides to conduct his own off-piste investigation, whereupon shit starts to get even more unreal than it originally was. Cut to Paul, for whom screwing up is apparently second nature, and junkie thief James (Abrams), to whom no crime is too small and no golden opportunity too out there…
Cregger (Barbarian) films the interactions from each character’s unfortunate perspective, which, while vastly entertaining as their outlandish lives clip along, brings us no closer to the baffling disappeared children. When a possible solution does eventually present itself, the incremental weirdness climbs notch by notch to a peak of pure crazy. With fiendish input from a grotesque Madigan, insinuating herself as Alex’s alleged Aunt Gladys, Cregger turns evil into the darkest art.
