Weapons Review

Zach Cregger's Follow-Up to "Barbarian" is a Shapeshifting Delight

By: Marc Kozak

Weapons

Zach Cregger's Follow-Up to "Barbarian" is a Shapeshifting Delight

By: Marc Kozak

Mainstream horror movies have been stuck in a bit of a rut for the past several years, as the genre has leaned heavily on stylish, self-serious explorations of trauma and grief. Most of these have long since started to blend together, but thankfully, a few exciting young directors have started to shift things in a different direction. Recent movies like the Philippou brothers' "Talk to Me," Osgood Perkins' "The Monkey," and Zach Cregger's "Barbarian" have dealt with the same serious themes but inserted a sense of fun and playfulness, inviting the viewer to leave the theater laughing instead of harboring an existential crisis. It's a seemingly small but refreshing change, and one that allows these movies to be heartily recommended to a much wider audience.

Cregger's latest project, "Weapons," might be the easiest of them all to recommend, as it's a deliriously fun thrill ride full of unpredictable twists, gleefully spectacular violence, and genuinely laugh-out-loud moments. What starts as an intriguing mystery about missing children eventually morphs into something else entirely, utilizing an effective screenwriting trick that breaks the movie into chapters that follow different characters as their paths crisscross over the same time period. It all ends in a profoundly satisfying final act of complete chaos that is almost guaranteed to have you cackling and yelling at the screen. In short, this is tremendous entertainment.

The initial hook is a good one, and one that is efficiently spelled out by a child narrator in the opening 10 minutes. On a seemingly normal night, 17 children from the same sleepy suburban town wake up in the middle of the night and disappear into the darkness with no explanation. Odder still, all of the missing children are from the same classroom, taught by Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), a who shows up to school only to find one remaining student in her room, the suddenly very quiet Alex (Cary Christopher). Justine swears that she has no idea why this is happening or where the children have gone, but the parents of the town don't believe her, harassing her at every turn, spray-painting "witch" on her car, and causing her to become a paranoid and vodka-chugging wreck. When the school's principal (Benedict Wong) tells Justine that it's probably best if she stays away from the school for a while, she tries to take matters into her own hands by following Alex around to see if he has any answers.

" It's a deliriously fun thrill ride full of unpredictable twists, gleefully spectacular violence, and genuinely laugh-out-loud moments. "

There is some basic commentary here about a community's collective grief as they attempt to process an unthinkable horror (akin to something like a school shooting). The town is full of people who are struggling to move on, including Archer (Josh Brolin), the father of one of the missing children, whose grief and rage is so great that he is sleeping in his child's bed and forgetting to perform basic tasks at work. He is hellbent on getting answers, looking for even the slightest clues by repeatedly watching the brief doorbell video of his child running, arms outstretched, into the dark.

On the other side of things is a much less concerned Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), Justine's ex and a police officer who gets obsessed with terrorizing a local meth addict (Austin Abrams), all while ruining his unhappy marriage to the police chief's daughter. All of these characters get their own chapter to explore their story a bit, with everyone eventually converging one way or another around Alex's house, where the windows are covered with newspaper and strange things seem to be going on inside.

This might all seem like pretty heavy material, but the movie is incredibly funny. These are characters living through their own worst nightmares, and Cregger delights in pushing their buttons, using their confusion to lead them into increasingly ridiculous situations. It also helps that that Cregger, the founding member of the comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U' Know, is a natural jokester, knowing how to get laughs out of Brolin screaming profanities or Wong having a serious phone conversation while shopping for cereal with his partner. The movie never overwhelms you with dread; it's much more interested in having a good time.

Similarly, some might argue that the movie isn't actually saying anything at all, especially as it abandons any trace of grief commentary after the first hour in favor of exploring the lore around a potentially supernatural explanation for everything going on. It's a twist that I happened to be on board with; not everything has to be about something deep. Cregger smartly realizes that most everything that can be said about pain and trauma has already been said -- let's get to the wild stuff. It may frustrate viewers who were hoping for some kind of psychologically profound statement (or even a logical explanation for things), but sometimes it's a lot more fun to be in the hands of someone who wants to capably entertain with some crazy shit.

Garner is quite good here, initially portrayed as a meek and quiet woman overwhelmed by the anger of the town, but eventually revealed to have more depth as a relatably flawed and messy person who deeply cares about her students. Brolin is equally at home as the alpha suburban dad who can't accept things out of his control, cruising around the town like an angry shark, just waiting to explode. Austin Abrams is a believable meth head, but his story seems to be structured for story convenience, even if it is often funny. If anything, the pacing of the movie slows down a bit before the final act, spending a bit too much time on Alex's psychotic aunt (Amy Madigan), who is revealed to be at the center of everything. Cregger does a decent job making everything make sense (as much as it can), but at a certain point all of that becomes secondary to just getting on with it so we can get to the final confrontation.

Cregger has made an intelligently crafted crowd pleaser with "Weapons," and cemented himself as the face of the new generation of horror. His influences may be elevated from a craft standpoint -- he cites Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia" as an inspiration, which can be felt in the story's structure, and he utilizes long tracking shots that feel straight out of "The Shining" -- but there's a delightful simplicity in his ability to come up with incredibly weird scenarios and take the audience for a fun ride.