Director: Zach Cregger
Cast: Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Toby Huss, Benedict Wong, Amy Madigan
Screenplay: Zach Cregger
129 mins. Rated R for strong bloody violence and grisly images, language throughout, some sexual content and drug use.

I didn’t write anything about Weapons when it first came out because I had such a bad theater experience when I saw it. About halfway through the film, the picture got very bright, and I figured it was just an aesthetic choice by the filmmakers, but then it cut out, and I was informed that the projector was broken and the film could no longer be shown. I NEEDED to find out how this story would end, but it took 3 weeks to find a theater showing I could get to, and I could only catch the last half. It was a very busy time of life, but I made it to the theater and saw the end, and I loved it, but so much time had passed that I didn’t really know if the movie was THAT good. Saw it again last night, and Yeah, it’s THAT good.

One night, at 2:17am, all but one student in Ms. Gandy’s class got out of bed, left the house, and disappeared into the night. Only Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher, Mank) remained, but police and the school could not figure out why. Some parents, like Archer (Josh Brolin, Dune), believe that Ms. Gandy (Julia Garner, The Fantastic Four: First Steps) had something to do with it, but she insists she didn’t. As the town unravels over the missing kids, several townsfolk try to understand how this could have happened, leading to horrific revelations.

Writer/Director Zach Cregger (Barbarian) has developed a style for himself that I affectionately refer to as “sometimes, fucked up unexplained stuff happens and now we have to deal with it.” While Barbarian can be considered slightly more small scale, Weapons is set from several points of view, all intersecting in a fractured timeline that has similarities to Rashomon but on a more confusing scale, as each character collides with each other but doesn’t know the significance of these collisions. Cregger’s filmmaking has a number of notable hooks between these two horror tales, but he deals with scale in a different way here, and a seeming choice to embrace a few folk horror tropes.

Due to its nature of shifting perspectives, Weapons is a true ensemble piece, all performers matching each other’s level and actively uplifting each other. Benedict Wong (Doctor Strange) proves to be an underused talent, and Josh Brolin brings the angry dad energy to the table. If I ever go missing, I want Josh Brolin looking for me.

What I appreciate most about Zach Cregger as a storyteller is his simplicity. You get the sense watching him that he gets an interesting question, then slowly works out the answer while writing, layer by layer, until he finds a fascinating angle. There’s no reinventing the wheel or grandiose machinations, just a simple unraveling that gets weirder and weirder as it goes.

Weapons is an incredibly entertaining mystery with a terrific building of tension and some really funny moments to break up that tension. I think there’s a new horror icon in the making here, and Cregger uses some low-level folk horror vibes stretched like a membrane just under the surface. It’s a step stronger than the already fantastic Barbarian, and I’m so excited to see what this writer/director does next.

4.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe