It’s already happened as we’re seated, watching, the spell being cast. What happened in Marybrook happened two years ago, our unseen child narrator tells us, when 17 third-graders went missing from the class of Ms. Justine Grady (Julia Garner, light-years away from her turn as the Silver Surfer in last month's The Fantastic Four: First Steps and finding the relatability in a low-key alcoholic spiral).
As you can imagine, nothing has been quite right in Marybrook since that happened, with everyone in town still reeling in their own way. And part of the skill that writer-director Zach Cregger wields in Weapons (his first film since 2022’s Barbarian) is how this central calamity doesn’t affect any two people the same way. And as we get to know many of these people, their differing perspectives collide with one another, revealing other jagged facets rather than solving neatly for easy answers and explanatory internet videos.
There’s a grad school thesis to be written about Cregger and architecture — his visions of the American neighborhood are rooted in buildings and structure like unholy collaborations between the Brothers Grimm and the spaces Mr. Brady designed on The Brady Bunch. He’s got an eye for constructivist imagery that makes these disparate locations cohere as a community — built on secrets and movements both social and individual.
When firing on all cylinders, Weapons feels like one of those weirdo classics of late ’70s/early ’80s mass market horror — something with a lurid cover that catches your attention at the used bookstore and compels the sales clerk to have their momentary internal dialogue about whether this might be too much for a preteen, but you end up reading it anyway. Something where the sex and violence are concrete, but all the weird permutations of human relationships are things that get placeholders in the subconscious because you don’t quite understand adult malaise or what makes adultery flourish.
Zach Cregger's Airbnb-centered horror flick is now playing at Regal and AMC locations
Weapons is a haunted hallway of adult themes, playing games with duration and attention spans in a way that demonstrates having spent one's formative years figuring out all the periphery around the mayhem and the monsters; it captures that process in a way that I imagine is going to piss some audience members off. But those same annoyed viewers will cheer the bravura last five minutes (something I witnessed at a sold-out public screening), because you should never doubt this ride is bound for something transcendent.
There are quibbles to be had, particularly with a very mercenary choice that does the one-two punch of representation-then-razing — it certainly gets its point across, but feels a bit much (though it is very much in keeping with a certain style and era of horror). But there hasn't really been anything made in the past few decades to compare Weapons to — it’s occupying a whole different playing field than the majority of horror, particularly the modest COVID-era work that pares everything down to a small section of the canvas. Cregger has a maximalist streak that yields big dividends (see also 2011’s The Civil War on Drugs), one that uses the cinemascope frame in a way that keeps your gaze locked in on the refractions and revelations before us.
Weapons is good enough that I find myself thinking I should revisit Cregger’s directorial debut, 2009’s deeply messy Miss March — co-directed and written with the late Trevor Moore, one of Cregger's compatriots in the sketch comedy group The Whitest Kids U’Know. It’s always a worthy pursuit to see how a gifted filmmaker makes that first step, even if it’s gawdawful, especially when it leads to something as singular as this. Â
