Director Zachary Cregger has solidified his place in the canon of affectionately (if not pretentiously) named “elevated horror.” He inverts horror conventions, rejecting linearity by using multiple perspectives, timelines, and tonal registers to craft stories. Barbarian (2022) stages its horrors in one location: a rundown house in Detroit, Michigan. The standard horror of the first act escalates into sequences of grotesque lactation and multi-generational incest. Cregger’s expertise is pacing; he uses shocking moments of violence and humor to make chaos orderly. The cohesion of his debut is owed at least in part to the rigid spine of a central location.
With his follow-up, Cregger’s worldwide hit Weapons (over $266 million at the box office), his ambitions have expanded beyond the four walls of a single house to the psychological architecture of an entire town. The film begins with the disembodied narration of a little girl. She vocalizes the inciting incident: At 2:17 AM, a class of seventeen schoolchildren got out of their beds and ran outside into the darkness, never to be seen again. Cregger focuses on the uniformity of each child's actions, soundtracked to “Beware of Darkness” by George Harrison.
The first thirty minutes of the film evoke Lynne Ramsay's We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011), an icy thriller, where the residents of a town forgo the maxim “innocent until proven guilty.” In Weapons, the character at the mercy of these pitchforks is Justine, played by Julia Garner (Ozark). Justine is a flawed character who suffers from a pervasive lack of boundaries. Garner’s charisma and Cregger's ability to write fully dimensional characters prevent Justine from being totally insufferable.
Justine is only one of the deeply flawed characters whose perspectives Cregger gives us access to. We cycle through a neglectful father, a violent cop, a raving vagrant, and a dispassionate principal. The lone child who did not vanish from the classroom hovers at the center, and may know more than he lets on about the disappearance. There is fault to go around in this town; Cregger is much more interested in collective guilt than solving the mystery.
So… why exactly do these children disappear? While Cregger does a good job at linking these disparate stories into a satisfying narrative, if your only concern is solving the central mystery, you will be disappointed in the film. The most vibrant moments come from the characters and how their distinct lives intertwine – completely separate from the supposed A-plot of the story. The dispassioned principal eats an entire row of hotdogs with his husband while wearing matching Disney shirts. Justine makes a beeline for the vodka aisle, only to be violently confronted by an ex's girlfriend she intentionally homewrecked. After being pricked by a heroin needle, the cop asks the raving vagrant, “Do you have AIDS?” It’s moments like these–rife with humor and horror–that define the film, confirmed by the irreverence with which Cregger treats the ending.
For the first 100 minutes, Cregger is a surgeon who treats the balance between absurd comedy and terrifying horror with utmost precision. The balls-to-the-wall ending sequence reads as the punchline in an overlong Adult Swim television skit. It works. Ending Weapons on such an irreverent note may be one of the most inventive choices of Cregger’s career.
Weapons is about the texture of the town. Cregger dedicates time to exploring addiction, infidelity, homelessness, and the overarching idea that at some specific point in time, something went terribly wrong. Weapons is about real and imagined fears of degeneracy.
The largest weapon is seen in a dream sequence. A man follows his child into a house. Above them is an impossibly large gun that reads “2:17 AM.” It is the only gun in the film. This remains central to understanding the film. It is about Weapons. The instruments used to inflict harm on others. The instruments that lead to the decay of a society. The instruments that make the ending feel disturbingly comedic and painfully appropriate.
Cregger has succeeded at balancing lofty ideas, shifting tones, and breakneck pacing into an enjoyable film. It’s the second time he’s climbed this mountain; he’s proven he is not a fluke. - Angel Barber
Mr. Barber is a writer and filmmaker based in New York City interested in the relationship between tone, structure, and collapse in modern cinema.