What Makes Zach Cregger’s “Weapons” An Instant Horror Classic
A combination of small-town drama and gross-out horror, “Weapons” pays homage to some of the best horror films of the last 15 years, while successfully establishing its own identity
When it comes to the horror genre (and when you think about it, movies in general), we’re kind of at the point where it’s like, what other original ideas are out there? Recently, it seems as though we’ve been bombarded with nothing but Marvel movies, sequels (some good, some bad), remakes, or just being waterboarded by way too much content on all the countless streaming apps we now have.
And while I can’t necessarily call Weapons totally unique, as clearly, it draws influence from several sources (which I’ll get into), the skill and mastery in which both the plot as well as characters are developed, is truly something special.
When 17 children go missing overnight, all at exactly 2:17 a.m., all from the same classroom except for one student named Alex (Cary Christopher), it sends the parents of the children, as well as the community in general, into an uproar. The teacher of the class, Justine (Julia Garner), is public enemy number one on the verge of being run out of town because everybody is convinced that she has something to do with this. One of the fathers of the students, Archer (Josh Brolin) is the main spearhead against her, demanding answers as to what happened. While many in the town are also rightfully suspicious that Alex knows more than what he’s leading on.
Director Zach Cregger’s choice of taking an Akira Kurosawa Rashomon-esque approach to constructing his story, where it’s broken into segments from each of the character’s respected perspectives, could’ve been seen as derivative and hacky. This has been done before in a movie like 2008’s Vantage Point, for example. But instead, it’s just one of the things that makes the film so arresting and intriguing and ultimately, a fantastic one.
I don’t see any horror movies coming close to the originality of 2017’s Get Out, which is just one of a few Cregger takes a page from, but Weapons makes a strong case for being right up there with the best in the horror genre in recent years. It adopts some Insidious type jump scares and imagery, throws in a similar Hereditary secret villain, and mashes it together with some Paul Thomas Anderson Magnolia (to be fair, NOT a horror movie) story arcs and characters (Alden Ehrenreich is essentially playing John C. Reilly’s character from that movie). There’s even some aspects of the cult classic TV show The Leftovers in there when you consider the plot is essentially about the rapture of 17 children.
And this isn’t to slight the movie for being a hodgepodge to a degree, because it takes true confidence and balance to be able to do all this, while being able to come up with a plot that doesn’t necessarily remind you constantly of all these things. And with one of the most promising young up and comers in Garner at the helm, alongside the always reliable Brolin in support, aided by the likes of Ehrenreich as a screw-up cop and Benedict Wong as the principal of the school trying to hold it all together – everything operates like a well-oiled machine from a pure storytelling and character development standpoint.
Without giving anything away, the reveal of the villain is also really satisfying. Not to mention, the ending has the audacity to get darkly funny out of nowhere, yet another curveball that I didn’t see coming. The movie seamlessly moves between small-town drama, to disgusting and over-the-top horror. And that kind of unpredictability is what makes it such a memorable experience.
In terms of recent horror films, I still have Get Out and Hereditary slightly above Weapons, but it’s not far off. If you’re looking for one last scare before the Halloween season is over, and if you have HBO Max (or Max, or HBO Go, or Go, or whatever they call it now), I can’t recommend this one enough.
Rating: ***1/2 out of ****