“Weapons” writer-director Zach Cregger understands that what makes us scream and what makes us laugh aren’t really all that different. With his 2022 debut feature film “Barbarian,” the pedestrian premise of a double-booked Airbnb veered into a completely different type of film altogether. With “Weapons,” Cregger has expanded his narrative scope and his directorial ambition to produce a sprawling mystery unravelled from six distinct character perspectives.
The film’s premise, which has been featured in promotional posters and the trailer, is undeniably tantalizing. One night, at 2:17 a.m., all but one of the children from the same classroom woke and ran off into the night. The indelible image of the children running with their arms strangely outstretched, as though pretending to be airplanes, was instantly iconic.
When the school reopens about a month later, the children are still missing as the town struggles to cope with the inexplicable loss. Their teacher Justine (Julia Garner) becomes a prime target of inquisition and harassment from devastated parents like Archer (Josh Brolin), who launches his own investigation to search for his missing son.
Could any reveal ever live up to such an enticing premise? It’s worth noting that “Weapons” does not deal in the sort of mind-bending, intricate sci-fi twists that might befit a Christopher Nolan film. Instead, the answer to what exactly caused the children’s behavior is actually very straightforward, drawing more from classic authors like the Brothers Grimm. The storytelling, however, is more labyrinthine.
In the vein of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia,” the story is split into six subjective points of view that overlap at different points over a few days. In addition to Justine and Archer, we follow school principal Marcus (Benedict Wong), unstable police officer and Justine’s ex Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), homeless drug addict James (Austin Abrams) and finally Alex, the boy who didn’t disappear (Cary Christopher). Each segment builds toward a violent climax before abruptly cutting away to a different perspective that recontextualizes what came before.
Cregger’s most impressive accomplishment in “Weapons” is his ability to build almost unbearable tension and then undercut it with something shockingly funny — often before making you scream once again. He achieves this effect partially by mining comedic gold from characters’ realistic reactions to insane, terrifying moments. In the film’s funniest moment, one character wakes up from a surreal, heart-pounding nightmare and can’t help but yell out, “WHAT THE FUCK?” In that situation, who wouldn’t? My theater erupted into relieved laughter, having experienced a wide range of visceral emotions in just a few minutes.
It’s remarkable that a movie about missing children can be as funny as this one is, but it makes sense. Before he was a director, Cregger was known for his role in the sketch comedy series “The Whitest Kids U’Know,” which featured darkly comedic bits like a grape-flavored spin on the Kool-Aid Man named “The Grapist.” As a master manipulator of audience expectations and emotions, Cregger’s comedic sensibilities have lent themselves well to horror.
It’s hard to ignore an obvious reading of the film — it’s called “Weapons” and is about a classroom full of students who vanish all at once. One dream sequence even features a massive AR-15 floating over the town. Yet despite these allusions to a school shooting, the movie never seeks to be an allegory about the phenomenon and has more interesting things to say about addiction and obsession.
Part of what makes this cast of characters compelling is that they are mostly good people (or trying to be, at least) with vices like alcohol, drug abuse and emotional unavailability that eat away at them as they attempt to cope with the unknowable. These themes become literalized in unexpected ways when we discover the force pulling the strings. “Parasite” might have been a more fitting title for the film if it hadn’t been used by another high-profile release so recently.
Some viewers may be disappointed with the simple answer to the central mystery, which begins to emerge about halfway through the runtime. The marketing has understandably focused on building intrigue, but “how” and “why” turn out to be more interesting questions than simply “what” caused the kids to run away.
With some standout moments of wild violence, there’s also no lack of genre thrills for horror fans. Needles, forks, vegetable peelers and the human forehead are all used as “weapons” at some point, to horrifying effect. The final minutes build to a delightfully bloody and ridiculously cathartic climax that will surely become iconic in the modern horror canon.
Some criticism has asserted that “Weapons” fails to deliver on its thematic promises, particularly because of the school shooting imagery that is never fully reckoned with. This expectation stems from a misunderstanding that Cregger is attempting to craft the kind of “elevated” arthouse horror film that has become popular in recent years: the kind where the monster is really an allegory for trauma, systemic racism or some other societal ill. In reality, Cregger strikes a more personal and primal chord that might not map cleanly onto a social issue. He’s interested in making you scream in horror, then laugh in disbelief while injecting just enough personal neuroses to make the whole thing tick. “Weapons” doesn’t function as a think-piece, but it cuts straight to the heart as a visceral thrill ride.
