We're Soarin', Flyin'

This one's about the horror-comedy Weapons. It's good.

I was having a conversation with Jake recently about Eddington, a movie that neither of us loved but that I certainly liked more than he did. I mentioned that even though there were obvious flaws and a meandering plot, I’d rather watch something like that, which truly goes for it, than a lot of the retreads and shameless pandering. Watch something like the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Ari Aster’s COVID-western feels like Citizen Kane.

Because Jake watches more tennis than most people do anything, he had the following comp: “I think junk ballers are kinda like [you watching] Eddington, where the average person is like wtf is this, but I watch so much tennis that I’m like oh this is fun and new.”

Essentially, I’ll give a go-for-broke movie more of a leash because it’s new … at least to me. And even if it doesn’t fully work, I’m always glad to get a bit of a shake-up and check out something that isn’t going to blend in.

Weapons, a new suburban horror-comedy from Zach Cregger, is the ultimate junk baller of a movie (if that long-winded intro makes sense). It’s the quintessential throwing stuff at the wall movie—it was even apparently written without much planning—and I couldn’t stop smiling throughout, even if what we were watching was pure anarchic chaos with a healthy dose of evil.

“Weapons was like me vomiting,” Cregger said. “And who doesn’t want to get a babysitter and go to the movie theater and spend 120 bucks to watch someone vomit?”

And so, in no real surprise: Weapons is my favorite movie (so far) this year, a multi-pronged POV film that jumps from character to character, which somehow keeps its constant dread while morphing from a more straightforward horror to a whodunnit detective story to a stoner comedy to a thriller.

Although it has some of the most what the fuck scenes of the year and a few truly freaky jumpscares, it also had a handful of the biggest laughs I’ve witnessed in a theater in a while. Our entire IMAX audience was locked in, in a way I could only compare to the recent Oppenheimer.

And yes, I did this. Quite a few times.

Cregger’s last feature, Barbarian, is a hell of a good time, a similarly oddly-paced horror that constantly makes you laugh, but this is the step-up of all step-ups, as Cregger navigates an entire small town with some of the best actors out there from Julia Garner to Josh Brolin to Alden Ehrenreich to Benedict Wong to [REDACTED].

The rudimentary plot is that 17 students from the same teacher’s class go missing, all waking up and leaving their houses at 2:17 in the morning. And boy, is the payoff worth it. Which never happens. Never.

You can take this movie in a multitude of ways. As just a nerve-racking thriller, as a gory mess or you can dig a bit deeper to see it as a treatise on school shootings, how different people deal with traumatic experiences and/or the unmistakable anxiety constantly under the surface in suburban malaise.

This isn’t hearsay; the director has said as much. Weapons came from Zach Cregger, trying to work again after the death of his friend (and fellow The Whitest Kids U’Know star) Trevor Moore. He passed away out of nowhere after accidentally falling from the upstairs balcony in 2021, and there are quite a few references to that incident from the movie coming out four years to the day (Aug. 8) of his death, to the important time of 2:17, to more fun, obscure references.

A pastiche of Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino and female-led horror/thrillers like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and The Silence of the Lambs, Weapons is both small in scope (just one town and a simple mystery) and expansive in its filmmaking and storytelling prowess. It’s like Cregger hand-made this with me in mind, and many, many others feel the same way.

Which brings us to the box office. The No. 1 movie last weekend, Weapons, has already grossed over $80 million worldwide, a bit of a surprise for a mystery-box horror movie with no A-List stars attached. Hopefully, Warner Bros. and fellow Hollywood studios don’t take the wrong lessons from this, which they’re wont to do.

For example, after Barbie, the real lesson should have been to give constantly surprising, driven auteurs (like Greta Gerwig) bigger budgets, longer ropes and carte blanche. Instead, we have upcoming IP movies like Hot Wheels, Polly Pocket and Barney the Dinosaur. Maybe some of these work, maybe they don’t. And yet, giving female directors more of a sandbox to work in should’ve been the major takeaway; we’ll see if that still happens, but I doubt it.

Likewise, Warner Bros. is already pitching a prequel/sequel centered on the main villain of the Weapons story, which could be good (I mean, I’d watch it) but is also a bit of a bummer. Let Cregger try something completely different and get out of the way.

I think the greatest compliment for a movie is watching it from beginning to end and immediately wishing that you could start it over and see it again from the top, which is what I would like to do soon for Weapons.

For how much I watch, it’s not often that I find myself this engrossed to such a degree where I have to remember to breathe throughout. Like Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, Coralie Fargeat, Julia Ducournau, Robert Eggers and Ryan Coogler, Cregger has become a must-watch in the horror (or horror-adjacent) genre. We’re in good (bloody) hands.

What a time. Movies are fun.