Zach Cregger is the latest promising 2020s horror auteur to release a second major film where we ask: “Does he have the goods or is he a fluke?” He follows 2022’s “Barbarian” with “Weapons,” and it’s safe to say he is legitimately talented. This is another Mystery Mine Ride of a movie, like Tarantino Does Horror.
More pulp horror fiction
Writer-director Cregger held my attention for the entire might’ve-been-pretentious 128 minutes; my quibble is the themes are rather slippery considering the time commitment. Cregger’s directing skills on individual scenes are so strong that it’s only upon reflection that we realize a given shock-scare doesn’t mean all that much, and the overall plot is standard.
The cast is great as we play out a “Pulp Fiction”-structured narrative of cutting between different points of view. “Weapons’ ” momentum is hurt slightly in that we start with the most compelling actor, Julia Garner (“Apartment 7A”), who plays Justine. She’s a suburban schoolteacher whose entire class – save one kid, Alex (Cary Christopher) – goes missing overnight, running from their houses into the liminal mists.
“Weapons” (2025)
Director: Zach Cregger
Writer: Zach Cregger
Stars: Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich
Since she’s the only adult link to these kids as a collective, she’s under suspicion by the parents of the district. Interestingly, Cregger undercuts the assumed storyline of Justine being persecuted.
Her friend and sometimes lover, the depressed married patrol cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), gives her advice that makes sense for the real world but rarely comes up in horror movies: Justine is stuck in her own head, wrongly paranoid. In reality, the community as a whole is not obsessed with her, is not secretly harassing her, is not unable to see that – as she insists – she knows nothing about the kids’ disappearances and wants answers just like everyone else.
Cregger’s willingness to keep one foot in sanity as he tells “Twilight Zone”-esque tales is broadly a strength, although it can turn potential weirdness rather mundane. Yes, it’s quite nice that Archer (Josh Brolin) – a dad of one of the missing kids — wants to work with Justine to solve this mystery, rather than rail at her about how she must be hiding something. But on the other hand, we lose a bit of tension.
“Weapons,” like “Barbarian,” is compelling not for sticking with one tone, but rather for effectively bouncing around. It’s comfortable with a dark brand of humor when the standard approach would be a pure horror mood. For instance, when Justine is at home late at night, a loud pounding on her door shocks her. Her prominent emotion is annoyance rather than fear; unlike most horror-movie heroines, she exists in the real world rather than in a horror movie. Cregger’s sensible perspective ironically keeps a viewer effectively off-balance.
A wild yet controlled ride (Spoilers)
(SPOILERS FOLLOW.)
That having been said, the eventual plot is wholly supernatural, and quite straightforward – although I admire how Cregger doesn’t over-explain it as is the 2020s wont. Alex’s visiting and dying Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan, in a “remember me” performance and loving every minute of it) has used witchcraft to subdue Alex’s parents and lure Alex’s classmates into the basement, where they stand “Blair Witch”-style in the dark. It’s implied that Gladys will use her witch skills to transfer their life energies till she is healthy again.
Even though “Weapons” does not overexplain anything, it also becomes more straightforward with each passing minute, and thus weirdness of plot is sacrificed. Instead, we get weirdness of visuals, and that’s not quite as interesting. Granted, the gore effects are excellent, especially in one of the rare movie conclusions where a villain truly gets what’s coming to her.
“Barbarian” marinates in the idea that Detroit has gone so sour that people could literally lose their humanity in that environment. In “Weapons,” Cregger isn’t interested in making a scathing statement about suburbia. He does make some points, but they are so fleeting that I might be reading them as themes when he doesn’t intend it: particularly, the general worthlessness of the cops as investigators, and the importance of a community bond rather than mass suspicion.
Because of the title and the premise of a classroom of kids who are suddenly gone, I thought Cregger might comment on school shootings. But – for better or worse — he doesn’t. There was also room here for a metaphor of kids running away from proscribed lives of suburban public schooling, but nope.
(END OF SPOILERS.)
Ultimately, I enjoyed Garner and Brolin as performers – and Benedict Wong is another always-welcome actor — but Justine and Archer are basically fellow riders on this mystery. This puzzle would be insane in the real world (where Cregger grounds it) but it’s standard for anyone who spends a lot of time with horror movies. Cregger’s filmmaking rightly exudes confidence, but I can’t shake the feeling that “Weapons” doesn’t hit as hard as it would if it was about something more than the ride.