Missing kids, small town horror, trauma and worse yet, angry parents at a school PA meeting, Zach Cregger seeks to succeed Barbarian (2022), which diverted the writer-director away from his comedy roots to modern horror. Introducing us to Cregger’s crafty use of nonlinear structure and rule breaking where its most challenging aspect served as the films greatest strength and source of intrigue, Cregger’s audacity to risk alienating his audience or simply failing to make his pivoting, irregular structure convincing have lead him to Weapons – prominently staring Marvels most recent shiny surfer of the space ways, Julia Garner, alongside Josh Brolin.
Mr. Graff, I can understand your passion and I don’t mind having these conversations with you because god forbid if it was my child, I’d be demanding answers too. Those kids walked out of those homes, no one pulled them out. No one forced them. What do you see that I don’t?
One night, at 2:17 am on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday in the small town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, seventeen children from teacher Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) third-grade class got out of bed, went downstairs, opened the door and ran out (oddly Naruto running) in the middle of the night: only one student and the teacher remained. Picking up close to a month later and it is clear the town is dealing with the trauma of the inexplicable events that occurred, the parents of the disappeared children directing their anger at Ms. Gandy, now turned to heavy drinking to cope, as if the whole incident were part of a nefarious plan. The rest of the film takes on a nonlinear, chapter based structure akin to The Grudge where each chapter follows the perspective of the story from different characters which converge at some points to fill in the gaps. In this way, Weapons challenges the audience to stitch together patches of the story and watch as the mystery unfolds, retreading the same ground from different angles, creating a uniquely investing experience that maintains intrigue even when some of the revelations may seem cheap by the end in another context – and when each chapter moves on to another character, we are often left wanting to see more.
Zach Cregger’s 2022 horror Barbarian highlighted how he can unsettle audiences in otherwise ordinary settings, which similarly dripped pieces of the mystery through a nonlinear progression that kept us on our toes and guessing the whole way through. Here, nightmarish dream sequences and grounded modern American nightmares are brought together to keep us invested with the distinct impression that we are being invited to consider the contemporary horrors of small town insular mob mentality, traumatic aftermath of school shootings and conservative Christian paranoia that fears the indoctrination of young people against small town Christian values. In particular, the latter sows distrust between the parents – desperate for answers and unwilling to wait for law enforcement to complete their investigations – and Ms. Grady, used unfairly as the outlet for their hysterical trepidation. Barbarian similarly challenged us to look past its surface to find the true horror of its narrative, where the Airbnb is found in a desperately poverty stricken, neglected suburb of Detroit forcing us to consider consequences of class and privilege, trauma and misogyny.
…every kid woke up, got out of bed, walked downstairs, and into the dark… and they never came back.
Weapons is innately eerie, bringing a Stephen King sense of dread to Roald Dahl’s Witches wrapped up in a Twin Peaks small town mystery that makes it feel like a Pennsylvanian Grimm’s Fairy Tale. Julia Garner and Josh Brolin, on opposing sides as the suspicious class teacher and agitated parent respectively, are joined by cop Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams as an addict and small-time criminal, and Cary Christopher – the kid who didn’t run away. Each carries their own segment, brilliantly keeping audiences glued to the screen, tantalisingly setting up puzzle pieces before cutting away to the next section as a layer of mystery is revealed. Even if the supposed labyrinthine plot development leads to far kookier, less sophisticated territory than it might have you believe, Cregger crafts an immersive experience that is equal parts fun and horrifying in the way a Grimm’s Fairy Tale should be.
