There’s a recent tendency in filmmaking, especially those circles that gravitate more towards the indie scene than the modern Hollywood approach, to explore the boldest topics through horror. It Follows is now more than a decade old, but it grappled with the topic of STDs probably better than any film since Kids. More recently, Oddity delved into loss and mourning with stunning effectiveness. Now, Weapons has come along and, in my view, immediately became a future cult classic.
The film’s creator, Zach Cregger, grabbed the movie-going world’s attention with the quirky and unexpected Barbarians. In his latest creation, however, Cregger found a way to take that potential and blast not just out of the park, but out of the stratosphere. The story of the film is eerie, strange, yet very familiar beyond its surface – a classroom of children simply disappears one night by running out of their homes and into the darkness. In the same class, only one boy remains, clueless about what has transpired. From that point, a frantic series of individual tales ensues, overlapping and intersecting, which all show a unified epic of fear, determination, survival, and hope, which all stand against an utter, soul-crushing hopelessness.
The cast of the film works marvels with a great script that is laden, somehow, with very effective dark humor. Here, Julia Garner, Cary Christopher, and Josh Brolin shine through in particular, along with what is likely the best role Austin Abrams has had in his career. They all complete their roles spotlessly throughout a film where at least a dozen different facial and cranial injuries occur, many of which result in gruesome, gory deaths. But, even these merge into the bigger whole, along with subtle and not-so-subtle references to one of the biggest collective dreads in the mind of modern America.
A masterpiece of social commentary, nail-biting horror, and out-of-place humor, Weapons is definitely not a film that comes around very often. Cregger already proved that he has a brilliant and remarkably different kind of mind, which is appreciated by everyone who loves art. Weapons show what can be done if the stars (human and metaphorical) align for people like him, and we need that alignment to keep going even stronger!
