{"id":10042197,"date":"2025-08-08T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T13:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/?p=10042197"},"modified":"2025-08-08T09:00:34","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T13:00:34","slug":"weapons-review-zach-cregger-joins-the-masters-of-horror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/2025\/08\/08\/weapons-review-zach-cregger-joins-the-masters-of-horror\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Weapons&#8217; Review: Zach Cregger joins the masters of horror"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>There\u2019s a reason Jordan Peele fired his agents after losing the bidding war for Zach Cregger\u2019s <strong><em>Weapons<\/em><\/strong>, and it isn\u2019t just because the word-of-mouth on this motherfucker is going to bring home the bacon at the box office. Peele\u2019s always favored the big, broad swing in his own work, and it\u2019d make sense that it\u2019d translate to the movies he wants to produce \u2013 this is, after all, on-brand, both from a filmmaking perspective and a personal narrative sense. Cregger and Peele were both sketch comedians who, to the surprise of everyone in the audience, got into genre cinema once their era-defining television shows (<em>The Whitest Kids U Know<\/em> and <em>Key and Peele<\/em>) ended. <em>Barbarian<\/em> might not have captured the cultural geist as much as <em>Get Out <\/em>did, but they\u2019re both fantastic, thoroughly entertaining debuts that double as thesis statements for their careers. Peele makes fantastic fables about the issues of American life in the mold of Larry Cohen and George Romero, while Cregger makes fairy tales, though they\u2019re ones without a goth faun in the central ensemble or a fish man laying pipe being central to the story. I get that comparing these two filmmakers is easy and rote, but I think it\u2019s deserved given that <em>Weapons<\/em> is one of the best films of the year so far, a Peele-like bomb dropped on the boutique distributors and elevated horror as a whole from Warner Bros. (the third after <em>Sinners<\/em> and <em>Final Destination: Bloodlines<\/em>, to be perfectly fair).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Weapons<\/em> is what a contemporary Brothers Grimm might produce when asked to steep a story in the toxic brew of current culture \u2013 and, as folks behind the scenes have long joked, had they been given a copy of <em>Magnolia<\/em> to help them out. I will not delve too deeply into specifics aside from saying that the film is an assemblage of points of view of characters, each of whom has an interesting perspective on and relationship with one of those \u201cbad miracles\u201d that Daniel Kaluuya went off about on <em>Nope<\/em>. That cursed moment came at 2:17 one morning, when all of the children in a specific elementary school class, save one, got up and ran away from home. They all ran the same way \u2013 arms spread out, running gently \u2013 towards some unknown destination. Among our protagonists are Justine (Julia Garner), the children\u2019s teacher; Archer (Josh Brolin), one of the parents of the missing kids; and Alex (Cary Christopher), the one kid who, for whatever reason, didn\u2019t vanish into the night. There are others, but I\u2019ll leave those for you to discover when you see the movie. We\u2019ve got plenty to talk about here with just those little nuggets of information I\u2019ve already revealed (and the ones that have been revealed to you by the movie\u2019s advertising).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think Cregger\u2019s got a handle on tone that few of his peers can compete with. What I mean by that: <em>Weapons<\/em> expertly navigates the line between <em>deathly<\/em> serious\/terrifying and broadly, bizarrely comic without resorting to the kind of ironic distance or austere stylization that assures the viewer that they\u2019re watching a recognizably modern horror feature. The closest analogue that I can think of is, believe it or not, Tobe Hooper. Well, once Hooper left Leatherface behind for the first time. His <em>Salem\u2019s Lot<\/em> (with its wider focus on a town\u2019s supernatural mysteries) and <em>Poltergeist <\/em>(in the expert blend of character, scares, and set-pieces, as well as Hooper\u2019s ability to film from the emotional vantage of a child). Sam Raimi came to mind as well, simply from the way he oscillates from horror to hilarity and vice versa, much like in <em>Drag Me to Hell<\/em> (one of the truly underrated masterworks of the aughts), as well as in the genuine brutality that underscores that particular film once it lands its last punchline. And, oh, what a glorious and brutal finale it is. Got-damn, how I wish I could talk about it instead of going back to the PTA well for more analysis, but you gotta see this shit untampered-with, and I\u2019m going to respect Warner Bros. on this one (after all, they asked so nicely). But, as promised, that last Anderson comparison: What he gets right in using the <em>Magnolia<\/em> structure is how it provides perspective, builds tension\/anticipation, and lets the audience participate in assembling the narrative web.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To conclude, there\u2019ll be some people who tell you that Cregger\u2019s movie lacks \u201csubstance\u201d or doesn\u2019t answer your questions or whatever, and they\u2019re wrong. But I just want you to know that, if the movie didn\u2019t have answers or some greater meaning (it has both), <em>Weapons <\/em>would still be getting this rave \u2013 you\u2019d just see me going on about \u201cvibes-based\u201d horror or something, which is what the genre defaults to when it wants to dress up an aesthetic exercise as a populist blockbuster by using the William Castle playbook (heartrate monitors, eye-tracking software, and so on). It may not be immediately obvious &#8212; I don\u2019t believe you\u2019ll have to look up the etymology of the word \u201cWeapon\u201d to figure out exactly why it&#8217;s the title, but I can\u2019t imagine that it\u2019ll hurt too much &#8212; but it is there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This isn\u2019t like <em>Barbarian<\/em>, where the meaning isn\u2019t exactly obvious yet&#8230; perfect, once you think about it. I think that\u2019s where the Peele comparison, beyond the funny factoid I began with, really lies: My sympathies have always been with <em>Us<\/em>, which is an ambitious and complex work that could also be considered mealy-mouthed and meaningless by folks who like their parables didactic. If Peele extended <em>The Dark Half<\/em> to the entire nation to illustrate our divides, Cregger has synthesized the Grimms\u2019 work into a grim study of manipulation and exploitation &#8212; a subject that never quite loses its relevance \u2013 yet maintains enough distance to allow for dozens of reads, all of which are perfect for debate at the pizza place following the screening you went to with your friends. As such, I predict the arguments over <em>Weapons<\/em> will be nearly as fun as the movie itself. <em>Nearly<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s a reason Jordan Peele fired his agents after losing the bidding war for Zach Cregger\u2019s Weapons, and it isn\u2019t just because the word-of-mouth on this motherfucker is going to bring home the bacon at the box office. Peele\u2019s always favored the big, broad swing in his own work, and it\u2019d make sense that it\u2019d translate to the movies he wants to produce \u2013 this is, after all, on-brand, both from a filmmaking perspective and a personal narrative sense. Cregger [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":10041259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19452],"tags":[20180,25331,26409,8141,35611,35612],"class_list":["post-10042197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-filmtv","tag-film-review","tag-great-movies","tag-header","tag-horror","tag-weapons","tag-zach-cregger"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&#039;Weapons&#039; Review: Zach Cregger joins the masters of horror<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With &#039;Weapons,&#039; Zach Cregger proves &#039;Barbarian&#039; wasn&#039;t a fluke. 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