To set the table and make the stakes of this review, allow me to be openly frank: I was not a huge fan of Zach Cregger’s Barbarian. While I found the filmmaker’s horror debut to be admirable in its ambition, I found its tonal tightrope walk to be a bit clunky in execution and its non-linear storytelling structure to be far more frustrating than it was fascinating. As such, I went into his newly released sophomore feature horror film, Weapons, feeling decidedly mixed about the filmmaker and his impact on the genre at large. However, I left Weapons nothing short of astonished, as the film sees Cregger tackling a hugely ambitious, large-canvas horror epic and delivering on nearly every possible level.

TOP FIVE THINGS ABOUT “WEAPONS”

5. A Stellar Script

With his previous film, Barbarian, I worried that Cregger had grown perhaps a bit too clever for his own good. For as much as the film borrowed surface-level elements and aesthetics from filmmakers like David Fincher, Sam Raimi, and Alfred Hitchcock, it often wielded those influences in malnourished ways that ultimately detracted from the film as a whole. With Weapons, though, Cregger proves me wrong and delivers a script that transcends beyond his previous work, beyond its influences, and becomes something greater than the sum of its parts.

The film is a much more intricately structured, elaborate, and complex work than the script for Barbarian was, and yet it feels so much cleaner in execution. Cregger feels as if he has learned valuable lessons about how to better utilize his penchant for non-linear stories, and the result is a work that feels as if it is seamlessly interweaving a series of different perspectives and vantage points rather than haphazardly shifting gears. I also think the idea to open and close the film with an unseen child narrator, simultaneously simplifying the tale to its core essence and elevating it to a modern folktale, is an ingenious stroke that pays off tenfold in the film’s ending.

4. The Performances

Weapons has an all-star cast of performers, working off of wonderful material as provided by Cregger’s script, and each of them delivers authentic, motivated, and compelling turns. Cregger mentioned in interviews during the film’s press cycle that after strike-related delays, he essentially had to recast the entire movie with this cast. So it’s a bona fide testament to the prowess on display here that each of these characters feels so wholly embodied and inseparable from their performers.

Josh Brolin gets to show off his gift for exhibiting reserved rage, Julia Garner is wonderful as the audience’s initial surrogate and exhibits empathy and terror in equal measure, Alden Ehrenreich continues to prove that he is a remarkable character actor trapped in a leading man’s body, and Benedict Wong is a scene-stealer by every definition of the word. But it must be said that the true heart and soul of the film is the young Cary Christopher, who delivers the kind of astounding performance in the final act that lends an emotional vulnerability to the entire film in wondrous ways.

3. A Tonal Tightrope Walk That Works

For those unaware, long before he was making critically acclaimed horror films, Zach Cregger was a member of the sketch comedy team, the Whitest Kids U’Know. To this end, Cregger is a very funny guy, who has always had a gift for delivering a well-timed, darkly-tinged joke. One of the real highlights of Barbarian was Justin Long’s character, whose tape-measuring gag remains deeply funny. Considering the heavy subject matter of Weapons, a film about a classroom full of elementary schoolers that goes missing, you’d be forgiven for thinking there probably isn’t a great deal of levity to be mined here. But as it turns out, you would in fact be very wrong.

Cregger manages to deliver a film that is both earnestly terrifying and incredibly funny. Hitchcock used to speak of using comedy as a release valve in his films, allowing tension from one setpiece to dissipate before building to the next scare, and Cregger has very much adopted that mentality here. Brolin gets an all-timer line delivery right after his character’s most elaborate horror setpiece, and Ehrenreich’s down-on-his-luck cop routine would feel right at home in a Coen Brothers film. But of course, the funniest gag in the whole film is reserved for the climax, which is an audaciously bold move. Building this entire horror epic up to an elongated joke could risk making the whole thing feel deflated and disappointing. But instead, Cregger manages to do the nigh impossible here, and deliver a finale that is scary, riotously funny, and deeply satisfying.

2. The Scares

The visual language of the film, as crafted by Cregger, cinematographer Larkin Seiple, and editor Joe Murphy, is frequently jaw-dropping. The film’s visuals are so concentrated, so centralized, and so profoundly motivated that you can feel the authorial intent emanating from the film from the very opening frames. All of this works in tandem with a series of exquisitely chosen needle-drops and the score (by Ryan Holladay, Hays Holladay, and Cregger himself) to create a film that is frequently hypnotic.

But nowhere is the film’s cinematic prowess more on display than it is in the horror sequences. Cregger has grown enormously as a filmmaker since Barbarian, and delivers sequences here that are far more nuanced, articulate, and ultimately horrifying. One of my personal favorite things that the filmmaker and his team do on Weapons is continuously keep pushing just how long they can keep the palpable dread of a setup dangling before they drop the payoff in the form of a scare. Some of the most inspired moments in the movie feature several minutes of heart-pounding anticipation being expertly sculpted and culminating in a stinger just when you’ve been disarmed. It’s wonderful horror craftsmanship.

1. The Final Beat

The final line and shot of Weapons is an absolutely harrowing beat that sent me out of the theater feeling as if I had been hollowed out. It’s a beat that drives home the larger themes of the film in such precise, punctual, and painful fashion. After all of the excitement, horror, and humor of the final act dies down, Cregger utilizes decades of audience expectations to his advantage and subverts them with one final, cutting addendum that cuts straight to the bone. It’s absolutely haunting, and perhaps one of the single most effective moments of cinema this year. Landing such a disheartening final blow just before the lights come up in the theater is, yet again, an incredibly gutsy move on Cregger’s part, and I can’t help but deeply admire it.

RGM GRADE

(A-)

I went into Weapons with tepid expectations, and left absolutely shell-shocked. Cregger cements himself as so much more than a flash in the pan here, with a phenomenally accomplished magnum opus of suburban horror. Weapons is both a cinematic delight on every front and raucously entertaining at every turn. Shit rules.

Will Jones