Julia Garner in Weapons

In 2022 Zach Cregger, alum of the comedy troupe The Whitest Kid U’Know, wrote and directed Barbarian, a horror film with a Big Twist that became a sleeper hit and set the bar for Cregger as not just a comedy guy, but a genre director Of Note. Now he’s back with his follow-up film, Weapons, proving that Barbarian was not a fluke, Zach Cregger has the goods, and he avoided the M. Night Shyamalan “outdo myself” trap of Big Twist filmmaking. Weapons might not work for everyone, but that is a matter of individual taste—you’re either on board or you’re not—and not a failure of filmmaking.

Weapons stars Julia Garner as Justine Gandy, an elementary school teacher whose entire class, but for one student, disappears at the same time at precisely 2:17 AM. The children just ran out of their houses and vanished. Justine comes under considerable scrutiny, as it was only children from her class which disappeared, so surely, she must be involved? Her principal, Marcus (Benedict Wong), puts Justine on leave, which in turn sends her into a downward spiral of alcoholism and poor personal choices. Garner’s performance is simply outstanding, another one of those great horror actress performances that absolutely should be in the conversation come Oscar time but probably won’t be because of genre bias, but Justine’s unravelling is masterfully communicated.

In fact, the entire cast is great. Weapons is loaded with terrific actors, including Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Amy Madigan, Justin Long, June Diane Raphael, Sarah Paxton, and Toby Huss. Cregger, who wrote and directed the film, provides even the smallest roles with rich material, and everyone digs in with gusto. Weapons utilizes a Rashomon-style narrative structure in which we see the same events from different perspectives, which gives the ensemble cast plenty of time to shine. Besides Garner, Josh Brolin is excellent as Archer, a father pushed to the brink, and Alden Ehrenreich is fantastic as Paul, Justine’s ex and a corrupt local police officer.

Weapons is drawing a lot of comparisons to Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film, especially the character of Paul, who seems like a darkest timeline version of Jim, the inept police officer played by John C. Reilly. But Anderson’s influence goes beyond Magnolia, a lot of the filmmaking in Weapons feels influenced by Anderson’s style, in general. This is a very well-directed film, loaded with meaningful imagery and effective visual storytelling. There’s just one problem—it’s dark as sh-t. Not unlike the gray/brown sludge look that overtook television in the 2010s, filmmakers have now decided that all movies need to have color grading done entirely in grayscale, rendering many scenes hard to decipher. It doesn’t have to be this way! Why are you making movies so dark! It doesn’t look “natural” or whatever, it just looks DARK!

Darkness aside, clearly a lot of thought went into Weapons. The film can be read as an allegory for gun violence, particularly school shootings, with a classroom of children suddenly gone, and a community rending itself to pieces to explain the inexplicable. But Zach Cregger is also a comedy guy, and, well, Weapons takes a hard left into comedy territory late in the game. Not unlike The Monkey earlier this year, the combination of horror and comedy might not work for everyone. It also sort of undercuts the attempt to take the film intellectually seriously, because the explanation of events is deeply silly, though executed with complete conviction by everyone involved, from the actors to Zach Cregger.

But at the same time, Cregger isn’t letting go of his intentionality. The number “217” appears in the film as the time of the children’s disappearance, it also appears to Archer in a dream. What does 217 mean? It’s the number of votes garnered by a proposed assault weapons ban in the United States in 2022. The bill ultimately failed in the Senate, and once again, the US did not take any steps to prevent children (among others) from dying in senseless gun violence. As silly as Weapons gets, is it really any sillier than a nation deciding to repeatedly let kids die at school?

Cregger’s brand of genre chaos is distinctively American. His Big Twists might test your resolve and the infusion of comedy in his works isn’t frictionless, much of the humor is intentionally uncomfortable, but all of his narrative and visual flair is in service of a story with intent and purpose. His stories are high concepts, hinge on insane reveals, and push the limits of audience expectation and patience, but what Barbarian and Weapons have in common is that the premise only works in the context of contemporary America. Where Barbarian explored the exploitation and abuse of women by a patriarchal society, Weapons is rife with hysterical paranoia, conspiratorial lunacy, and rampant cynicism, allegorizing the degradation of American civic life over the last twenty years. Whatever neighborly vision of America once existed is long dead, and Zach Cregger is making a meal of its carcass. 

Weapons is now playing exclusively in theaters.