By Matthew Moorcroft

Highest Recommendation

• Directed by Zach Cregger
• Starring Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong
• R

When I reviewed Barbarian several years ago – my first year of writing reviews, actually – I called Barbarian a movie that goes “full sicko mode from the start”. If Barbarian is the movie that basically starts at 100 and never lets up, Zach Cregger’s follow up Weapons, which is one of the most anticipated projects of the year for many a cinephile, is the movie that starts at 100 before the opening logos even begin. A movie whose very premise is one where you go into not knowing what the hell to expect and then almost thrown for a loop right away.

Focused on a fractured town after a tragedy befalls a classroom of students, Weapons uses it’s large ensemble cast to weave a web of intrigue that goes beyond just it’s narrative intentions. Just like Barbarian, Weapons is a film that almost seems to start and stop multiple times, constantly resetting the audience’s own perception of events to disorient and keep them guessing as to the true nature of the film’s eventual outcome. Like a lot of great horror films, Weapons plays to the audience almost as an active observer rather then a passive viewer, treating them as much of the experience as the film itself.

Cregger is in top form throughout the entirety of Weapons, using the skills he’s clearly crafted his debut to really expand his repertoire as a director. Avoiding much of the shakier cam scenes that appeared in his prior work, Weapons is clean, crisp, and precise, telling it’s story with a large amount of gutso and confidence. It’s less interested in the potential of allegories or metaphors, though if one wants to read the film through said lens it’s possible for that. Instead though Weapons is more at home as a Stephen King inspired fable, a story about long standing fears, trauma, and old mistakes that come back to light in the midst of terrible tragedies and omens.

The intricate entanglement of characters covers the gambit of the town – from it’s teachers to it’s law enforcement to the parents to even some of the random citizens who may be caught up in the story simply through happenstance – and through their eyes we see a greater picture that could have been seen through a singular person. What might be a simple meeting between old lovers in one perspective is, in another, an easy stress relief from something heinous that he has done quite recently. In another, a random man asking for cash could have his own story, one filled with his own troubles and difficulties that may not be easy to see on the onset.

Weapons is obsessed with these contradictions in people, and while as a film it’s also keen to be a great and gnarly genre picture, Weapons is also a picture that is textured and layered in how it wants to portray it’s themes and ideas. That lack of clear cut allegory as mentioned before means a lot of Weapons‘ more mysterious plot hooks or even sequences are left up to both viewer interpretation and also character interpretation, a lack of clarity on purpose that serves not as lazy writing but as purposeful texture. Explanations are easy, ambiguity is the real challenge.

Julia Garner and Josh Brolin lead the charge here performance wise, the two of them having to do difficult lifting in meaty, difficult roles that force them to run the gambit of emotions through much of the picture. Garner in particular, who is the main focus for much of the early parts of the film, has the otherwise thankless task of having to play sympathetic character with normally unsympathetic qualities, mainly to force the audience to reckon with their own preconceived notions of morality and how that otherwise factors into the narrative. But even they are eventually upstaged by an absolutely wonderful Amy Madigan, whose appearance in this is best left unspoiled as much as possible but gives it her all and runs an equal number of emotions as our point of view characters just in different ways.

Zach Cregger already placed himself as a horror director to watch with his last picture, but with Weapons he cements himself as maestro of the genre and one of our very best working today. It’s wildly original, ridiculously entertaining filmmaking that balances tone with ease and keeps the audience guessing as to it’s true intentions at all times. Frankly, in a studio system that prevents these kinds of flicks from getting made on the regular, Weapons feels like a minor miracle and a prime example going forward of why these are so important to the ecosystem of film. One of the year’s best and a must watch for any horror fan.