Movie Nation

Glancing back at my review of “Barbarian,” the sinister, smart and sometimes funny blend of scary and silly that became actor-turned-writer/director Zack Cregger’s breakout movie a couple of years back, I’m tempted to repeat myself.

He got “the simple things” right back in 2022, and he hasn’t forgotten that lesson with “Weapons,” his grim, darkly funny and close to heartbreaking follow-up.

“Weapons” is a genre piece that hides which horror genre it traffics in until the later acts. Lile “Barbarian,” its resolution is a lot more straightforward than the mystery it serves up.

It’s very well cast, as great scripts draw in rising stars and big names such as Julia Garner, Benedict Wong and Josh Brolin, with onetime Oscar nominee Amy Madigan, at her most fierce and fearless here.

The most horrific effect in it has nothing to do with the gruesome violence, at least some of which is played for laughs in this film. It’s the sight of grainy, dark doorbell camera and home security CCTV footage of elementary school children, bursting out of houses and fleeing into the night, their arms spread in a kind of pre-flight the for the possible rapture.

One of the most perfectly written voice-over prologues (read by a child) ever tells us the entire story as a way of setting up the action to follow.

“So this one Wednesday is like a normal day for the whole school, but today was different. Every other class had all their kids, but Ms. Gandy’s room was totally empty. And do you know why? Because the night before, at 2:17 in the morning, every kid woke up, got out of bed, walked downstairs, and into the dark… and they never came back.”

The title is cryptic enough to have fans salivating about its meaning or meanings pre-release. As children who vanish into the night is its horror, it’s a gun violence allegory, adults seemingly “helpless” to stop the loss of schoolchildren to appease firearm profiteers, fearmongers and those unstable enough to hoard such weapons and the politicians who pander to them.

And what’s a consequence of children growing up in a country where the adults can’t won’t keep them safe? Children who are ripe to be “weaponized” themselves.

Garner is perfectly cast as Justine, a kind young teacher with “issues” which start to come to light after almost her entire class of ten year olds vanish at 2:17 that one morning in tiny Maybrook, Pennsylvania.

Brolin is a contractor and father whose son’s vanishing has completely unraveled him. He’s the loudest of the parents shouting for answers, badgering the police chief (Toby Huss), berating the principal (Wong) about “answers” that teacher Justine should provide.

But she can’t. No one can, and that has people raging at her, the school and the cops, who seem as numbed by the shock of it all as everybody else.

The narrative then shifts into flashbacks leading up to that meeting with school and police about the disappearance, flashbacks from six different points of view.

Justine is seen as unsettled but brittle, unable to process emotions about what has happened, which has been something of a Garner specialty since her “Ozark” breakout and follow-ups like “The Assistant.” Justine hits the liquor store, fumes at harassment and tries to renew her love connection with married cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich).

We follow Paul on the job, working for his father-in-law (Huss), going through the motions at work because of a wife ready to get pregnant, avoiding alcohol between “meetings” and bullying suspects because his temper lets him forget there’s a camera in his police cruiser recording his behavior.

Austin Abrams plays the town junkie, and we see him trying every car door, looking for one that’s unlocked, petty pilfering, hitting the pawn shop and shooting up in the woods. But that junkie Paul is quick to threaten and toss around may have some answers.

We see the principal’s (Wong) struggles to make Justine conform to district guidelines about how much contact to have with students, and see his same-sex domestic life as he struggles to get beyond this tragedy that happened, beyond his control but still technically on his watch.

Is there a way of “working” this “problem?” The contractor Brolin plays is letting it all fall apart around him — his business, his marriage. He wakes up in his missing son’s bed most mornings. So he starts his own investigation, which will bring him into contact with all of the others. But will it bring him answers?

And young Cary Christopher plays Alex, the one kid not summoned into the night from that classroom. We see his bullied schooldays, his loving parents and pick up on the disruption that comes to their lives when they take in a desperate, dying aunt (Madigan).

“Weapons” has a lot of structural and thematic elements in common with “Barbarian,” including the way the jolts and twists are handled. The fact that children are involved adds pathos that Cregger’s previous film only touched on briefly.

He brings back Justin Long (as a parent, here) as a “Barbarian” connection, and even added an obscure needle drop from his parents’ era in music as an Easter egg with some pop to it. Back then, it was a Donovan tune. Here, it’s a lesser known work from George Harrison’s post-Beatles masterpiece LP that sets the tone.

In horror, imitation is the sincerest form of filmmaker flattery. And if aspiring frightfilm folks aren’t taking notes on Cregger’s movies, and trying to imitate them, they should be.

Give your script some emotional heft, and don’t be shy about making viewers work to find what they’re supposed to get out of it. Leave them something to chew on as they leave the cinema.

One thing any parent going through the loss of a child has to wrestle with is what they could have done to prevent this. Is this somehow my fault?

With its themes and topical subtexts (the “gun” thing will occur to you before it’s confirmed), with one parent raising a bully who figures into every classmate’s fate, the answer to that “fault” question is a great one for viewers to consider.

Cregger, like Jordan Peele and Robert Eggers, knows that smart horror is the best horror. And that any horror movie that starts arguments and conversations the moment the credits roll is a winner.

Rating: R, graphic violence, much of it involving children, drug abuse and sex

Cast: Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Sarah Paxton, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Justin Long, Cary Christopher, Toby Huss, Benedict Wong and Amy Madigan.

Credits: Directed by Zack Cregger. A New Line/Warner Bros. release.

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