Supernatural, But Disturbingly Real: ‘Weapons’ Terrifies with its Depiction of Suburban Grief

By Jackson TOYON

Like Jordan Peele, the oddly consistent “comedy-writer-to-horror-film-director” pipeline has produced another gem in the form of writer and director Zach Cregger. 

Cregger started his career among his close friends in the irreverent sketch comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U’Know, but later directed the breakout horror hit “Barbarian” (2022). That film had a mere $4-4.5 million budget while this new venture clocks in at $38 million, signaling New Line Cinema’s faith in the script it paid top dollar for. Coming off his last success and following the death of his good friend and fellow Whitest Kid Trevor Moore, Cregger seeks to create another thrilling tale and cement his career as one to watch.

“Weapons” centers around the sudden disappearance of 17 elementary school children at exactly 2:17 a.m. – all of them from the same third grade class and all of whom calmly woke up and ran out of their homes into the night as though in a trance. The missing children’s teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) begins her day with the revelation that all but one of her students never made it to school that day plunging the suburban town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania into despair and disarray. As residents wrestle with what happened to their children and why, a few parents merely give up and mourn after a month without success from the police investigation. Many, like desperate father Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), persist in anger and suspect that a devastated Ms. Gandy knows more than she’s letting on. 

In a story told almost like a novel, the film follows the town’s descent into social paranoia. Events unfold across the overlapping perspectives of six characters ranging from Ms. Gandy to an alcoholic police officer (Alden Ehrenreich) to the lone child (Cary Christopher) who avoided disappearance as the truth about the Maybrook Missing slowly comes to light.

Cregger has a particular knack for keeping viewers on their toes for the entire runtime. He creates scenarios where a shot suggests something horrible (such as a door slowly opening, dark nothingness behind it) and quietly holds that shot for a stressful amount of time before finally revealing precisely what you feared you would see – or something completely different. While not as claustrophobic as the cramped environments featured heavily in “Barbarian,” this technique works just as well as it does in the film’s predecessor. Cregger combines scares from the horror genre with terrors from the real world, creating something more thrilling than what a scary creature on its own can accomplish. Multiple scenes gave my audience collective gasps and fearful winces, which measurably heightened the theater-going experience.

Josh Brolin gives the standout performance of the film. He portrays heartbreak as he laments the loss of his son and even a few laughs as he throws around an enraged, possessed man more times than would usually be necessary. And though it’s a story focused on an ensemble cast, none of the six protagonists of “Weapons” is ever truly the hero. All struggle, most succumb to their vices or base instincts, and none ever gains a full understanding of everything that went down. A little girl narrating the beginning of the film explains that the local police later covered up the disappearance case out of shame because they were never able to determine exactly what happened – information the audience is privy to by the end.

There is a core theme in this film that I feel it did not go far enough exploring – it’s hard not to see the Maybrook Missing as a chilling allegory for a class of children lost to a school shooting and the local community’s reaction to it, especially when one specific scene of the film directly implies it in an unsubtle manner. But “Weapons” is still compelling and it stands as strong evidence that “Barbarian” was no fluke. Zach Cregger is no one hit wonder – he’s here to stay, and I look forward to seeing what horrors he next comes up with.