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If you (you, the reader of this review) are like me in that you try to avoid any form of engagement on anything you are actively excited to watch, then this opening paragraph is just for you. Read until the end of this paragraph, go watch producer Zach Cregger’s Weapons, then come back and read the other [however many paragraphs I end up writing ← editor, keep this in like this ← and the part where I tell you to keep it in]. To sum up whatever nonsense I write under this, Zach Cregger’s Weapons is a great film. Go see this in as packed a theater as you can.
Horror is a genre that is ripe with community interaction, and this film is the pinnacle of communal moviegoing. Go take your parents, your siblings, your pets, your kooky aunt — Weapons is a devilishly good time at the movies.
Loss and Grief
Grief is a strange beast; we all will experience it in some way, yet we all react differently to it. In the case of Zach Cregger, his friend and comedic partner from The Whitest Kids U’Know, Trevor Moore, passed away in 2021. The loss of a close companion and friend is crippling; the paths that one can take to elevate said grief can range from constructive to absolutely destructive. In his own grief, Cregger gave us Weapons, a film steeped in the damn emotion. It is as much a piece of him as his voice or his limbs. That form of personability can be felt through the film. While it isn’t as clean as his previous effort, Barbarian, Cregger delivers a film that leaves you wallowing as well as oddly comedically satisfied by the time the credits roll.
Grief is the connective tissue between all the characters. A teacher who had made great strides in alcohol abuse recovery, grieving over her students and sense of peace, an overly macho father grieving over his missing son, a sober and depressed cop grieving over his destructive alcohol habits, and a boy grieving over his loss of innocence. In a way, these characters are all extensions of Cregger’s own grief. In an interview with Variety, he states:
Rather than going and drinking myself to death, I’m able to write a character that drinks herself into a problem. I can take my anger and have Josh Brolin freak out, and that’s better than me freaking out.
Zach Cregger via Variety
The basis of Weapons is built upon grief. It takes the viewer through the gamut of the kind of emotions one feels under loss.
Unloading the Plot
The marketing for Weapons has been largely shrouded in mystery. The little appetizer of a plot that prospective viewers are given is that one classroom full of students goes missing. Consequently, the suburban American town of “Maybrook” must reconcile with this loss. Akin to Barbarian, the lede of Weapons — or the film’s true intention — is buried and slowly begins to unravel. However, with Barbarian, the type of horror we were to expect only gets built upon in the most twisted way possible.
With Weapons, the entire genre of horror is obfuscated from the viewer until about halfway through the movie. Like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, the film is presented through the use of vignettes wherein each character is connected in some way and everything is wound together for the finale. Thus, a certain character’s story is told up to a certain point. That is, until the story stops entirely and pivots to a different character.
How Weapons is structured is meticulous and progressively reveals its cards. In a similar fashion to Barbarian, there’s a moment where you get a peek into what exactly Cregger is playing at involving a basement. In both times—when I saw Barbarian and now Weapons—, there was a collective gasp at these reveals. The remainder of the latter rewinds and explains how we got to that point. With both films, the way this works delivers a large jolt to the viewer and then progressively slows the adrenaline until the end. It’s a creative swing that delivers in both instances and leaves you shellshocked. With Weapons‘s structure, the character used to reveal it is one that had no business being involved with the “big reveal”. However, it further enforces the idea of connectivity with all of the characters in the film.
Weaspons‘s Ending(?)
Weapons ends in a comedic fashion, the likes of which are similar to barbaric (see what I did there) Three Stooges. The horror in Weapons isn’t incredibly showy either, but opts for a more introspective and isolating type of horror. A lot of Jacob’s Ladder, Silent Hill, and Cure can be drawn as inspiration for Weapons‘s type of horror. The viewer will undergo many emotions, but the tinge of grief will be touched on the most.
By design, Weapons‘s comedic final five minutes are used to derail the last twenty-five minutes of anguish. This is done to great effect. Some may call it a cop-out. However, Weapons’s ending is satisfying in the right way, never allowing the comedy to take away from the pain. Weirdly, the ending is similar to 28 Years Later in its execution (which was widely divisive). By the time you exit the theater, you feel as if you’ve had a great meal — a bad great meal (if there is one?).
It should also be noted that in his interview with Variety, Cregger has another idea to add to the Weapons world. Perhaps, the story isn’t over just yet. Editor’s Update: As per The Hollywood Reporter, a prequel is currently being discussed between Warner Bros., New Line Cinema, and Cregger.
Final Thoughts on Zach Cregger’s Weapons
Weapons is an intensely personal and extremely approachable horror jaunt, which is best viewed with as big a crowd as you can land yourself in. The experiment of the film itself alone is a gigantic win. Luckily, you have a great meditation on grief to go along with it. The marketing for the film is grabbing and drew me in in the same way Oz Perkins’s Longlegs did. Yet, unlike Longlegs, Weapons actually sticks the landing. Weapons is a brilliantly evil good time at the movies — one that should not be missed.
RATING: 8/10
Zach Cregger’s Weapons is now playing in theaters!
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Recovering Texan. Full time consultant, part time writer.
