By Dolores Quintana
You might be asking yourself what the film Weapons is about. Not to worry, writer and director Zach Cregger, whose debut feature Barbarian was a hit that hit the audiences in 2022 like a bolt of lightning, with its surprising twists that did not call attention to themselves as twists, and its upsetting horror plot, has something horrifying in mind.
It signaled that Zach Cregger was a director who would take commonplace situations and quickly devolve them into pits of horror. He made people do such mundane tasks as checking into an Airbnb nervous, since we had accepted a situation as safe, and his film showed that perhaps we were a bit too trusting. I’ll bet there’s not a film critic in the US who didn’t check their lodging much more carefully after watching Barbarian on the film festival circuit.
With his second film, he has done something that scary movies frequently do: set up a mystery that must be solved.
Here is the synopsis: When all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanishes on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.
The film stars Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, with Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan. You can watch the trailer here:
What Cregger has done is create a film that is the opposite of an onion; rather than peeling the layers back to reveal the truth, he adds each layer of the story, one on top of the other, until the core of the idea is made plain. It’s a wise tactic because it draws the audience in.
He has also imbued the film with a sinister current, a thrumming voltage that you start to feel in your blood that starts to pump your heart faster. As legs pump faster and faster, the pace of the film starts to cause you anxiety as the people in the film careen towards the edge.
I will admit that I was shaking at the end of Weapons.
The actors in the film do good work, especially the warm, empathetic, and funny characters who you really like, or selfish and emotionally withdrawn characters that you empathize with, are both put in excessive amounts of danger. The cast’s two lead characters, played by Julia Garner and Josh Brolin, fall into the latter category, as two people who refuse to deal with their own feelings either through stoicism or drinking.
Where other movies would make the leads more vulnerable, Cregger has chosen two people who are obsessed with finding the answer to the children’s disappearance out of guilt and a need for forgiveness. They are frightened, faulty people who are doing their best when they get whacked with the horror stick.
Even so, I would rate this as one of James Brolin’s most affecting performances, as a father who cannot admit his love for his child until it is too late and whose disappearance is making him crazy. Julia Garner does well as a complicated woman who, nonetheless, cares. Some of the things she does aren’t likeable, but she has strength.
Benedict Wong as the school’s principal, Andrew, Cary Christopher as Alex Lilly, the one child who remained, Alden Ehrenreich as a police man, and Austin Abrams as Paul, a small-time criminal and drug addict, are the standouts, but I could name more. In fact, there’s one specific person I can’t name because spoilers, but wow, she’s great.
The cinematography by Larkin Seiple is understated, but Seiple uses his camera to create tension, and there is a shot of a hallway, with one character staring towards the camera, that makes me feel somewhat queasy to look at because the perspective is wider than it should be. It almost feels like the walls are curved around in a way that suggests that the world is slightly off, similar to the geometry of R’leyh in Lovecraft’s works. It’s also entrancing at the same time.
The score, which is quite eerie, was created by Ryan Holladay, Hays Holladay, and Zach Cregger.
In Weapons, Zach Cregger has enlarged the scope of his storytelling into the outer world, while still keeping a toe in the dark inner places of homes. The film makes you feel unsafe in a world that is supposed to be humdrum, and then has the audacity to allow the natural humor of such terror to make you laugh. It’s very stabby and there’s a very funny running joke about a person being punctured repeatedly by hypodermic needles that is particularly unnerving even if you aren’t afraid of needles.
Weapons weaponizes our own belief in the status quo and safety, sending a spike through your brain. It’s the terror of the world attacking you for no reason that you understand, and there’s no way to stop it. Weapons worms its way into your nervous system and does a number on your sense of personal safety.
You can purchase tickets here.
