Some people may think I’m crazy, but as a lifelong horror fan, I feel right now we are in the Golden Age of horror cinema. When you look at the box office this year and last, horror has simply been a dominate force, and I’m loving it. What’s even better is that it is new material that is raking in the money rather than seeing tired retreads of IPs that have been exhausted over and over again. Sinners, though it wasn’t my cup of tea, dominated the box office, and even though I’m not the film’s biggest fan, I still like seeing horror rake in the money. I’m loving that we’re getting all kinds of horror lately, where an indie slasher like Terrifier is going to be featured at Halloween Horror Nights, and we’re getting all sorts of experimental horror. For instance, later this year we’ll get Goodboy, a paranormal story told through the perspective of a dog. (Sure, it sounds silly, but I’m all for it.) This brings me to Barbarian. For me this has been my favorite horror film in the past five years, and that’s saying a lot, because there has been A LOT of good horror lately. From the moment I heard about Zach Cregger’s next film, Weapons, it immediately shot to the top of my list of most anticipated films. Now that the film has finally come out, is it worth the wait and the hype that surrounds it?
The setup is relatively simple. One night at 2:17 am, 17 students got out of their beds and ran out of their homes and disappeared. The next morning when the teacher went to her class, only one of her students showed. So what happened to these 17 kids?
The film doesn’t waste time and uses this as a jumping-off point for the story. The film has a very interesting narrative structure. A portion of the film focuses on one character at a time, and we get to see the mystery slowly unfold, getting more and more information as we progress from one character to the next. The film is a slow burn, but if you are patient, it just gets better and better, and by the end you start to understand the importance of why the story needed to be told this way.
It starts with us meeting Justine (Julia Garner). She’s the teacher and the one that many of the parents hold responsible for the disappearance. We get to see the torment and hell she’s put through as she herself seems at a loss for what happened, and she wants answers just as badly. I’ve been a fan of Julia Garner since her time on Ozark, and in Weapons she really shows us a very vulnerable side, and she is very much the emotional foundation in this film. Then we meet Archer (Josh Brolin), one of the distressed parents of the missing kids who is dissatisfied with the investigation and decides to take matters into his own hands. It’s no surprise that Brolin is great here, and when we see Garner and him together, the performances are just so good you can’t help but become emotionally vested in these characters.
Now, I’m going to be as spoiler-free as possible with this film, and for those considering seeing the film, do your best to try to avoid spoilers, because this film does take you for a ride with some genuine WTF moments. What I will say is that the first half of this film isn’t what I’d consider horror; it is definitely more of a crime thriller / mystery, but ever so slowly the horror creeps in, and when this gets into the horror territory it goes full-on into the horror and has some creepy moments that will stick with you.
One film this reminded me of a bit was Prisoners (2013), and frankly I feel it would be a great companion film with Weapons. There’s a character, Gladys (Amy Madigan) who gets introduced, and this is the point where I can’t decide what I think about this character, because to be honest, when she was introduced it somewhat subverted what I was expecting with this film. It’s yet another great performance, but it’s a character I wish we got more information about, and we don’t even meet him till around the midpoint of the film. Though the same can be said about Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), who is a cop in the small town who used to be a love interest to Justine. Cregger does such a good job at creating these characters and their connections that he just had me wanting more. This film could have been stretched out to be a TV mini-series, and I would have remained engrossed.
The cinematography from Larkin Seiple (Everything Everywhere All at Once) is also pretty great here. There are many low-light shots where he shows us just enough to creep us the hell out. Then there are some fun tracking shots through the film, but the one sequence that stands out …The shot instantly reminded me of the sequence in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when he’s running home to try to beat his parents home … only in Weapons it is done as a horror sequence. I frigging loved this moment.
I feel like I need to watch this film a second time before I decide where I rank it with other films this year. Right now it’s certainly in my top five films I’ve seen this year. I still feel Life of Chuck is this year’s best film …Though Weapons may be the best horror film of the year despite some other heavy hitters that have come out. I know some people will walk away disappointed, and that’s OK. Zach Cregger definitely took some creative chances with this film, and for me it elevated it. How Seven elevated the thriller genre and showed how great a detective story can still be, I feel Weapons does the same for horror. Like I mentioned before, it’s a good time to be a horror fan.
