** Spoilers Ahead **
Zach Cregger’s new horror movie Weapons arrived in theaters in early August, and it’s been a big success so far, getting mostly positive reviews (94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), and doing great numbers at the box office, including holding its numbers from week to week.
The film, Cregger’s follow-up to Barbarian, has a great hook: In an American suburb, 17 kids from one class all ran off into the night one night, not to be seen again. The town soon gets angry at the teacher (Julia Garner), as what happened is slowly pieced out throughout a nonlinear narrative that shows the overlapping points of view of several different characters.
It’s a horror movie, a mystery, and also something of a comedy, as a film about something as tragic as disappearing children has way more laughs than one would think. The film builds on Barbarian, in further establishing Cregger as an expert stylist with things to say ― and like Jordan Peele before him, he came to the world of multi-genre horror directing by way of sketch comedy.
Like all good movies should, Weapons has started some arguments and led to some discourse. Some of it makes more sense than other parts, but it’s all worth discussing. (Spoilers for Weapons from here on out.)
The “It’s About Nothing” thing
The biggest critique I’ve seen leveled at Weapons is that it’s about nothing. The Hollywood Reporter looked at this:
It’s no surprise the film has led to discussions about its deeper meaning. But the most frustrating point among them is the argument shared by several critics and a wider collection of the audience that the film doesn’t have a deeper meaning and is ultimately about nothing.
Rather, the argument goes, audiences are placing meaning into the film because years of so-called elevated horror have trained them to expect —and thus look for — surface-level meaning. It is a claim that I find not only false but anti-analytical because of course Weapons is about something. It’s about so many things that to even limit it to one feels reductive.
Yes, I agree. I suppose you could complain that the film doesn’t have the exact ending, or the exact resolution that you wanted, but that’s kind of a dumb way to watch movies.
The QAnon Thing
Some people who saw Weapons saw parallels between the film and the QAnon conspiracy theory, especially the part about a bunch of children disappearing, and adults trying to find a conspiratorial scapegoat for it.
The film also shows shades of Eddington, recalling the pandemic era, especially all the memories we have of angry parents yelling at school board meetings. But of course, the ultimate conclusion of Weapons ends up having nothing to do with child sex abuse, government conspiracies, or secret basements under pizza parlors.
The “Hagsploitation” Thing
The ultimate villain of Weapons (once again, a spoiler alert) turns out to be Aunt Gladys, a relative of Alex, the one kid in the class who didn’t disappear. Gladys, it’s revealed, is a witch who used mind control tactics to lure the kids to her basement, and later seeks to similarly brainwash other characters.
Gladys is a fantastically conceived character, played by Amy Madigan in a turn that’s already getting awards buzz. But there’s also talk that the character is an example of “hagsploitation.” As described by Polygon:
Some viewers have complained that it delves into “hagsploitation” — the use of an older woman as a monstrous figure, characterized by a gnarled or otherwise exaggerated body that equates age with terror and evil…
This is sometimes also referred to as a “psycho-biddy” role, and recent forms of it have appeared in movies like ‘The Substance’, Ti West’s ‘X’, Cregger’s ‘Barbarian’, and the Eggers brothers’ ‘The Front Room‘.
The Polygon piece does note that “Cregger’s version of the trope lands differently than it does in other recent movies that cross the line into bad taste.”
I just think that sounds like a newish coinage that we’re all supposed to immediately reject, when in fact the Gladys character was probably the best-realized part of the whole movie.
Also, it appears some people like it:
The AR-15 Thing
One of the most controversial moments in Weapons comes when one of the dads (Josh Brolin), during a dream sequence, sees a giant AR-15-like rifle floating above his house.
This is mostly seen as a way to make the subtext — that the kids disappearing is similar to a school shooting — into text, although alas, it turns out to be a dream, the kids aren’t dead, and that’s about how far the metaphor goes.
I’m with this guy, as far as that goes, but no, I don’t think the 2:17 time has anything to do with how many votes an assault weapons ban got in Congress. That strikes me as a pretty major reach.
I was afraid the film would pull that thread further, and the third act would have, like, an earnest plea for gun control, but thankfully the movie is way better than that.
The Hot Dogs Thing
The film’s biggest meme, so far, has involved a scene in which school principal Marcus (Benedict Wong) and his husband (Clayton Farris) are visited by Gladys, and they serve a tray of several hot dogs:
This, it turns out, is a tribute by the director to Trevor Moore, his late Whitest Kids U Know co-star, with the movie arriving on the anniversary of Moore’s death:
What is it with movies and hot dog memes?
The Magnolia Thing
Cregger has cited Paul Thomas Anderon’s Magnolia as an influence on Weapons.
Per Entertainment Weekly:
‘Weapons’ and ‘Magnolia’ couldn’t be more different, but Cregger cites their many similarities. It’s melancholy, yet it has comedic situations. The sky is regularly cloudy, yet the scenes are colorful. It’s a sprawling ensemble, but the characters are fully developed in their own worlds.
“I just like that kind of unapologetic, ‘This is an epic,'” Cregger says. “I love that movie. I love that kind of bold scale. It gave me permission when I was writing this to shoot for the stars and make it an epic. I wanted a horror epic, and so I tried to do that.”
This has led many people to note that Weapons isn’t really told in any way, similarly to Magnolia, a film that isn’t told in a non-linear way.
The Recasting Thing
And finally, Cregger has said that the film was originally set to go with a completely different cast, until that version fell apart as a result of the writers strike, and he had to start over with all new actors, except for Austin Abrams, who was in the cast all along.
Pedro Pascal, for instance, was originally set for the Josh Brolin role, with Renate Reinsve playing the Garner part. Had Pascal been in it, I feel, the discourse would have been twice as insane.
