‘Weapons’ Review: Zach Cregger’s Eerie and Funny Horror Mystery

Specializing in the aftermath of the mysterious disappearance of 17 youngsters from the identical third-grade class, comedian turned horror auteur Zach Cregger’s Weapons has the identical mix of horror and comedy that made the filmmaker’s Barbarian such a breakout success. Right here, Cregger mines much more frightful suspense out of darkish areas and the supernaturally deteriorating our bodies that linger inside them. However for each second of electrifying horror, the Whitest Youngsters U’ Know alum cleanses the palette with equal comedian reduction.

At instances, this balancing act proves unstable: Early on, the movie makes use of one too many fake-out leap scares wherein the characters are revealed to be dreaming or hallucinating, and the climax reaches a breaking level the place the comedy undercuts any remaining rigidity. However, by and massive, Cregger will get the alchemy proper, and the movie’s tonal shifts go down simple.

Like Barbarian, Weapons additionally employs a chaptered construction. We initially observe Julia Garner’s Justine, the instructor of the lacking youngsters and prime suspect of their disappearance, earlier than title playing cards sequentially usher us into 5 different involved townsfolks’ views of the occasions. Most distinguished amongst them are Josh Brolin’s Archer, a mourning father, and Alden Ehrenreich’s Paul, a deputy largely detached to the disappearances.

Whereas he’s cited Magnolia as a reference for the movie’s ensemble nature (it’s an affect additionally felt in Ehrenreich’s flip as an incompetent mustachioed cop), Cregger has crafted a tighter and extra low-key movie, albeit a extra disjointed one. By means of the separation of chapters, the characters really feel siphoned off in their very own worlds, suggesting random individuals who occur to be on the incorrect locations on the incorrect instances through the seemingly supernatural goings-on.

Which isn’t to say that Cregger’s character work is missing, as a result of he presents an array of grounded and flawed characters. We see surface-level however sensible manifestations of Justine’s alcoholism and in any other case troublesome conduct, and solely later will we study that that is solely the tip of the iceberg of her private issues. What we don’t see goes a great distance in Weapons. The identical less-is-more method to characterization additionally applies to Paul, who finds himself in the midst of a marital spat we solely witness the fundamental latticework of. Even Whitmer Thomas, who performs the daddy of the one pupil who doesn’t go lacking, injects a sobering melancholy into an in any other case chipper character with only some minutes of display screen time.

What’s refreshing about Cregger’s work is the extent to which he invokes social points like gentrification, sexual assault, and, within the case of Weapons, college shootings with out eclipsing his narrative considerations. Towards the backdrop of a group mourning the lack of a number of youngsters in a classroom setting, we get a psychedelic dream sequence wherein Archer hallucinates an enormous AR-15. In case you learn the movie as reclaiming the lives of kids killed in class shootings and rendering them searching for revenge on their aggressor, the climax could also be in poor style, however Cregger is aware of when to take his foot off the fuel. By that time, the fantasy logic turns into too convoluted to ascribe to any real-world analog, and Cregger is pleased to steer us towards a gleeful show of limb-ripping and gut-popping carnage.