WEAPONS Review: Zach Cregger’s Sinister Sophomore Horror Is No Slump
The multi-story saga is now playing in theaters.
This review does not contain spoilers for Weapons.
Sophomore features can be a tough beast to tame, even for the most gifted of filmmakers. For every Midsommar, Titane or Bring Her Back, there’s a [insert your most hated second directorial feature here, we're not evoking the wrath of horror franchise fans!] The pressure to follow up a strong debut is applied tenfold when said debut remains one of the most beloved horror-thrillers of the decade so far, launched off the back of its own equally mysterious marketing campaign. Needless to say, all eyes are on Barbarian director Zach Cregger, whose Weapons, now playing in theaters, could either cement him as a one-hit wonder or one of the freshest voices working in modern horror. Thankfully, it’s the latter.
You’ve all seen the logline by now – one night, at exactly 2:17am, almost twenty children from across the city of Maybrook get out of bed and run off into the night. It’s up to the community, including Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), the homeroom teacher of the vanished kids, and grieving parent Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), to uncover the sinister secrets of the disappearance and who, or what, is behind it. In a similar vein to PTA’s Magnolia or Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Weapons unfurls its tapestry of terror across six ‘chapters’, each following the lives of Maybrook citizens related to the incident, whether directly or tangentially. While the vignette structure doesn’t always feel confident in its narrative purpose, it grants Weapons a hugely effective ebb and flow of tension and relief, as every segment ushers in a whole new view of the story and gives all of Weapons’ core set of players a chance to shine, even if their story doesn’t initially seem to hold as much weight.
