Warner Bros. has been really slick with its promotion of Zach Cregger’s Weapons. The filmmaker’s follow-up to Barbarian had a lot of buzz right from the beginning, but the hype has kept as much as possible concealed. It was for good reason. Weapons is not a movie that you want to know a lot about going in. The best aspect of it is that you have no idea what it truly is, and trust me, you don’t. There’s so much more to Weapons than meets the eye, making it one of the best major studio horrors in a long time.
The basic premise is all you need to know going in. On a seemingly normal night, at 2:17am, a teacher’s entire class of students, save one, vanishes into the night. That teacher, Justine Gandy, is played by Julia Garner, who can also be seen right now as Silver Surfer in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. So she’s having a moment. Justine becomes the prime suspect in her students’ disappearance, harassed by the community as a “witch” and threatened with physical harm.
That’s all you need to know. Weapons doesn’t roll out like a typical horror. In fact, it doesn’t even seem like a horror movie for much of it. Instead, Cregger dishes out information almost in a Rashomon style, following specific events from the perspectives of different characters. Josh Brolin plays the father of one of the missing kids, Alden Ehrenreich is a troubled cop who shares a past with Justine, Austin Abrams is a junkie who can’t stay out of trouble, and Benedict Wong is the school principal taking a lot of the heat from parents. There’s even a surprising role for screen veteran Amy Madigan that I definitely won’t spoil here. And just wait until you figure out what the title actually means because even that will knock you for a loop.
Weapons plays like a drama much of the way, but Cregger and cinematographer Larkin Seiple do an amazing job of creating an atmosphere of pure dread. Especially in the gorgeous, unearthly evening sequences, it’s made to look as if this community has been plucked from reality and dropped into a nightmare. The screwed-up townspeople don’t help, either. Justine might be the most sympathetic figure we meet, but she’s no angel. She drinks, she doesn’t mind sleeping with a guy she knows is married. She’s complicated, but also authentic. All of the characters feel genuine, including Brolin’s Archer who seems like he’s just going to be an angry, misguided parent but ends up so much more. Abrams, a standout from the films Wolfs and The Line, makes the most from what could’ve been a throwaway comedic part. Maximizing his minutes on screen is Abrams’ superpower.
So where does the horror come in? Mostly in the final act, but the wait is more than worth it. Cregger comes up with some truly gruesome imagery that you’ll want to scrub from your brain. Even the jump scares sprinkled in along the way hit the mark because we’re so captivated by the mystery and the drama of these people’s lives. And boy, there’s a lot of drama. There’s also a ton of dark humor, too, which works to lower your defenses to the horrific stuff to come.
I liked Barbarian a lot, but it was also gimmicky and hasn’t stuck with me over time. Weapons won’t be that way. Already I can’t wait to see it again and see anything I might’ve missed. Weapons is a horror classic that people will be revisiting for many years to come, establishing Cregger as one of the best the genre has to offer.
Weapons is open in theaters now.
