Behind That Locked Door

My thoughts on Weapons

I should probably admit that I never got around to reviewing Barbarian, the 2022 solo debut feature from writer-director Zach Cregger—when it opened, I was in the midst of recovering from multiple eye surgeries and my less-than amused memories of my brief exposures to The Whitest Kids U’Know, the sketch comedy series that he was a part of ensured that it didn’t exactly rise to the top of my catch-up pile once I had recovered. However, the film did go on to become a surprise hit at the box-office and garnered a number of fairly respectable reviews that were intriguing enough to inspire me to finally get a look at it once it hit streaming. The film, which told the increasingly twisted and twisty tale of an Airbnb rental that proved to be keeping a number of bizarre and horrifying secrets behind its seemingly ordinary facade, was not a total success or even particularly good—at a certain point, the whole thing just became too preposterous to believe, even by low-budget horror movie standards—but it did have some undeniably noteworthy things going for it. Although the story was largely ridiculous, the tricky structure that Cregger deployed to present was interesting, he was mostly able to navigate the shifts in tone between blood-curdling terror and weirdo comedy and it certainly kept you guessing throughout as to where it was going at any given time. Ultimately, it didn’t quite work for me but as near-misses go, it was one that demonstrated enough style and ambition throughout to make me curious as to what he might attempt for a follow up.

At long last, that follow up has arrived in the form of Weapons, a project that has been the focus of great scrutiny in some quarters, thanks in no small part to an oblique marketing campaign that has gone out of its way to avoid explaining what it might possibly be—a rarity in an era where the Hollywood hype machines, especially for horror films, are in a near-permanent state of overdrive and where the finished films, more often than not, too often feel like afterthoughts to the promotional blitzes that preceded their release. Happily, the film more than lives up to the promises made by Barbarian as Cregger has devised yet another fascinating hybrid of horror and humor that is a vast improvement on its predecessor in nearly every department and even when parts of it don’t quite work or add up in the end, the hiccups come almost borne almost entirely from its ambitions and not out of laziness. The result is the kind of thing that moviegoers always yearn to encounter, especially in the waning days of summer, but rarely do—an out-of-left-field surprise that will leave constantly guessing and which pulls off both the horrific and humorous aspects with equal ingenuity and skill.

In order to preserve the many surprises that Weapons has in store for viewers, I promise to say as little about the plot as possible. Suffice it to say, it takes place in Maybrook, a small Pennsylvania suburb that suffers an unimaginable horror that we witness—but assuredly do not understand—during the mesmerizing opening moments in which , at 2:17 a.m. on an ordinary school night, 17 of the town’s children get up, walk out of their homes and disappear into the night, running with their arms outstretched with George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness” serving as the eerie musical counterpoint. To make matters even creepier, all 17 children were in the same third-grade class at the local elementary school and only one student from that class, a shy boy named Alex (Cary Christopher) remains. Not surprisingly, the townspeople, especially the parents of the missing children, soon move from grief to anger as they look for somebody to blame for what happened and at a school meeting that quickly goes sideways, one of those affected parents, Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) stands up and accuses Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), the teacher of that affected class, of having presumably done something to the kids, though neither he nor anyone else can exactly articulate what that might be. As for Justine, although she is a woman who does undeniably have issues of her own, she clearly cares about the kids as well, resents being made into a local scapegoat and is as determined as anyone else to get to the bottom of what has happened.

The information that I have supplied above can be found almost entirely in the film’s coming attractions trailer and so as not to run the risk of spoiling anything, I will say no more about the particulars of the plot. I will add, however, that the film employs a fractured narrative structure that breaks things up into six sections, each one focusing on a particular character and often presenting certain story points from these differing perspectives in order to present a fuller picture (or not) of the unfolding tale. The first two of these inevitably follow the footsteps of Justine and Archer, the third involves Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), a local cop with his own issues who is married to the daughter of the chief of police but who is nevertheless having an affair with Justine and the fourth centers on Andrew, the school principal who is trying everything in his power to keep a bad situation from somehow getting even worse. As for the identities of the other two, to even mention them would most likely push into spoiler territory, so I will leave them for you to discover on your own.

Structurally, this is a pretty ambitious approach for a horror film to take—one more reminiscent of the more sprawling epics of Robert Altman and Paul Thomas Anderson than the usual genre fare—and one of the great pleasures of Weapons is watching these elements coming together even as they continue to leave you guessing as to where it all might be going. Cregger has constructed his screenplay with jigsaw-like (as opposed to Jigsaw-like) precision so that bits that might seem extraneous at first glance end up paying off in fascinating and largely satisfying ways after the shift in perspective—Cregger employed a similar, if less ambitious, approach in Barbarian but pulls it off with greater success this time around, which is especially impressive when you consider that anyone who saw that earlier film will no doubt be primed for having the rug pulled out from under them. As was also the case with Barbarian, Cregger employs a slow-burn approach to the horror that favors a mounting sense of creepiness and dread (aided in no small part by the striking and at times unnerving contributions of cinematographer Larkin Seiple and the score composed by Cregger, Hays Holladay and Ryan Holladay) over jump scares and gory gross outs (though the bloodshed on display is certainly memorable, to say the least). The film also manages to nicely navigate between horror and comedy throughout—even though the film is ostensibly meant to frighten, it has a genuine sense of humor as well and indeed, I found myself laughing more often while watching it than I did during The Naked Gun and that film was supposedly to be a comedy first and foremost.

The performances are also quite good across the board and with several of them coming across as even better than that. Garner is excellent as the troubled teacher who is often her own worst enemy but is determined to figure out what happened to her students even while enduring her unwanted position as town pariah. Brolin turns in some of his best work in years as the parent whose churning feelings of rage, guilt and helplessness drive him along, often in ways that he doesn’t quite understand. Among the supporting players, Austin Abrams is very funny and effective as a junkie standing on the periphery of the events until he unexpectedly finds himself smack dab in the middle of it all. Finally, there is veteran actress Amy Madigan in a role that is, to put it mildly, unlike anything that she has ever even attempted to do at any point in her long and illustrious career and which she pulls off in such a wild and unforgettable manner that even Nicolas Cage, the king of oddball performances, might need to bow in her presence the next time they happen to cross paths.

The only real flaw with Weapons is perhaps an inevitable one—once the film enters the final stretch and it shifts from stringing out its mystery to finally getting around to explaining itself and solving its various mysteries, it starts to get a little less interesting. (Perhaps not coincidentally, this is also the point where the amount of on-screen bloodshed begins to ramp up considerably, in ways both cringe-inducing and gruesomely funny.) I suppose there is also the possibility that some viewers may find themselves resisting Cregger’s structural gambits and the way that they subvert the traditional genre rhythms. For the most part, however, Weapons is a real winner—the second major studio horror film of this year(following Sinners) that has elected to take big, ambitious swings instead of merely following the usual formulas with machine-like precision and even when those swings occasionally fail to connect, you cannot help but at least respect the effort behind them. The result is the kind of smartly conceived and executed horror film that be enjoyed by genre fans and neophytes alike, both of whom should find themselves equally thrilled, amused and, yes, thoroughly grossed out by what they have just witnessed.