Zach Cregger puts us under his spell in his terrifying and weird Barbarian follow-up. Here’s our Weapons review.
If there’s already one thing you can count on with a Zach Cregger movie, it’s that you’ll never know what you get. That was the case with Barbarian, the director’s 2022 debut and it’s certainly true with his sophomore feature, Weapons.
Sure, Weapons starts off as your general, run-of-the-mill horror mystery when 17 kids from the town of Maybrook get up at 2.17am and simply run off into the night. No one knows where they went, they simply disappeared.
And this is all you should know going into Weapons.
Much like Barbarian, some of the fun comes from not knowing where the film is going at any given moment. There’s no neat three act structure here and much in Weapons is unexpected. You don’t often get to watch a film and genuinely have no clue where things are going. But hey! Here’s one.
What’s also surprising, though, is just how funny Weapons is. As much as this is a horror film – and it truly is horrifying – Cregger’s film is also a pitch black comedy. Horror films tend to elicit laughs from the audience anyway after jump scares as people come to terms with their own jumpiness, but Cregger has more control over our reactions here. We’re but victims to his tricks and I was loving every minute.
He’s also gathered an impressive cast to help him deliver the spooks.
Julia Garner, currently being seen in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, turns in a fascinating performance as Justine, the teacher whose class the missing children were in. In the film’s opening minutes you assume she’s the wrongly accused victim here, but Cregger offers a lot more nuance.
Same goes for Josh Brolin’s Archer, a desperate father looking for his son. Amy Madigan is as entertaining as she is suspicious as Gladys and Benedict Wong gets to have a lot of fun with a more physical role. Cregger isn’t afraid to fill his film with unpleasant, morally questionable characters. You’re never sure who you can trust or who could be revealed as the villain.
While this review will not include any spoilers, the ending of Weapons deserves a mention.
While most of the film gives you only the smallest of hints at what’s really going on, Cregger truly lets loose in the final half hour of the film and what a 30 minutes that is. There’s a really effective balance of pure fun and terror; if the first 90 minutes has a pressing, threatening atmosphere, the last bit goes completely wild.
There’s a hint of Hereditary in Weapons. Both films take their time, delivering the scares slowly before erupting into complete, overwhelming terror. But Weapons isn’t interested in being another so-called ‘elevated horror film’. Cregger constantly hints at deeper themes – our distrust of the police to do their job, the descent into anger at the face of tragedy and our blind trust in family – but the focus here is the experience itself. Cregger seemingly wants you to come out of the film shaking with fear rather than wondering about life itself.
When crafting such a big mystery and refusing to give your audience nothing but crumbs about it, Cregger risks setting himself up for failure. For some, the resolution will never match the puzzle itself, regardless of what it is. Although the ending is positively, deliciously demented, it can’t quite answer all my questions. Cregger doesn’t bother explaining everything either, which will certainly bother some but there’s also something fascinating about being left partially in the dark.
Like 28 Years Later, Weapons isn’t afraid to go all out and be weird. It’s a risk and Weapons might prove to be too weird. Yet like Robert Eggers, Cregger has found his niche and has mastery of it. It’s not often we get an original, mainstream horror film this risky and bold, and that’s the real treat here.
Weapons is in cinemas 8th August.
