Weapons is a masterpiece of modern horror

The horror genre is much like Park Ji-Sung at Manchester United; it never quite gets the respect it deserves.

Horror films are often treated as disposable and rarely catch the attention of both critics and audiences.

Every so often, however, a minor miracle happens and a horror film catches fire with people from all walks of life.

Films like The Exorcist and The Silence Of The Lambs are historic examples, The Substance and Sinners are more recent ones, and we can now add Weapons to the elite club of classic horror films.

Weapons is the new film from comedian turned horror auteur Zach Cregger, who announced himself as a name to watch with 2022’s Barbarian, one of the most surprising horror hits of recent times.

Like Jordan Peele before him, Cregger used his past as a sketch comedian to make a film that used the basic principles of comedy – set-up, building, punchline – and transplanted it onto the horror genre.

With Weapons, Cregger shows astounding confidence and maturity as a filmmaker and proves he isn’t a one-hit wonder.

Weapons doesn’t just live up to high expectations; it blows past them.

The film has a simple premise: in the middle of the night, 17 school children all run out of their house at the same time and vanish into thin air, leaving a grieving community behind.

Straight away, there’s a hook, and one that everyone fears: what if someone close to you vanished in the middle of the night without a trace?

Weapons takes a lot of influences from disparate sources – the hookline about missing school children recounts Peter Weir’s adaptation of Picnic At Hanging Rock or Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners – but the main influence on Weapons is Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film Magnolia.

Magnolia (better known to the masses as that one Tom Cruise movie where it rains frogs and is like three hours long) is a massive part of Weapons’ DNA as the film cuts together the story from the perspective of different characters, we see scenes play out more than once from the perspective of different characters and crucially, it all links up at the end.

A film told from the perspective of various characters needs a good cast to back it up, and the film delivers in front of the camera as well.

Ozark’s Julia Garner and Josh Brolin are the most notable names in the cast (Garner plays a teacher who has all but one of her students go missing, Brolin plays a desperate father who is looking for his missing son), and the film also benefits from a great supporting cast.

Garner is terrific in the lead role, and is well-cast as a teacher who cares, perhaps a bit too much, about her students, and Brolin plays the mania of a father who is desperate to find his son brilliantly.

In our review for The Royal Hotel, we noted that Garner never has a good time in any TV show or film she’s in, and her wounded bird mentality is perfect for a film like Weapons.

Similarly, Brolin’s simmering rage is perfect here; you sense he’s one red string and corkboard away from going full Jake Gyllenhaal in Zodiac.

Alden Ehrenreich went toe-to-toe with an Oscar-winning Robert Downey Junior in Oppenheimer and played the jealous lover in the Netflix hit Fair Play; his performance in Weapons is the engine of the film.

Similar to John C Reilly’s role in Magnolia, Ehrenreich is a down-on-his-luck cop who just can’t catch a break; his personal life is all over the place, and things aren’t going much better at work.

Ehrenreich was somewhat unfairly sidelined by Hollywood after his portrayal of a young Han Solo was overshadowed by a crummy movie, but seeing him in roles like this tells us he made the wiser decision in doing great character actor work.

Like Sinners, this film trusts the audience to keep up and doesn’t take them for fools.

There is a real confidence to the storytelling in Weapons that is rare at a studio level.

We suspect that Weapons was given the hands-off treatment by Warner Brothers; there is little sign that the film was compromised at a creative level, and Cregger got to make the movie he wanted to make with no notes or pushback from higher-ups.

Cregger trusts the audience will be able to keep up with the different plot lines, and does so by creating an atmosphere that feels almost Lynch-ian at times and always feels like it’s about two degrees off; it is impossible to keep your eyes off this film.

Just like Barbarian, Cregger is prodigious at making the mundane – something like a character walking into a liquor store – scary.

The films of Weir course through the veins of Weapons; the core concept, as we mentioned, recalls the seminal classic Picnic At Hanging Rock, while one dream sequence is a direct lift from The Last Wave, and the conceit of a mystery hinging on the words of one boy recalls Witness.

The films of Wes Craven are also a major influence on Weapons; Craven, a former English teacher before he gave the world Freddy Krueger, was invested in making you think about the sociology at the heart of his films.

In the very first A Nightmare On Elm Street, there is heavy subtext about how the parents went to great lengths to keep their kids safe, even when it seemed like they were acting against their own best interests.

Weapons plays with similar cards, focusing on the societal elements of what would really happen to a small, close-knit town if a group of kids suddenly vanished in the middle of the night.

Horror movies are like a Trojan horse where you can get bums on seats by promising scares, and while they have the audience’s attention, take the chance to speak about broader societal issues.

By combining all these disparate elements, Cregger makes a horror film that pays homage to the classics, but also makes it clear he is his own man who has etched his place into movie history.

Don’t be surprised if you see either this film or Sinners at the Oscars next year; both films are really that extraordinary and proof that, yes, horror films should be taken as seriously as a Martin Scorsese film or a music biopic.

Horror and comedy are the kinds of films that play best with a packed crowd; be sure to see this one in the cinema.

Missing this one will haunt you.