WEAPONS: Zach Cregger’s Upcoming Magnum Opus

Zach Cregger has a lot to live up to following how wildly popular Barbarian was among the horror community. A film that took your perception of what it was going to be, flipped it on its head, and gave us a crazy concept with a fucked up dark twist to grasp onto starring Justin Long. WEAPONS is getting the marketing hype that I can only compare to the marketing success LONGLEGS had last year. A mysterious trailer that we know the general plot of what gets the story started, but we have no idea where we are going. And that is for the best in WEAPONS.

Zach Cregger has already promised that the audience will be taken down twists and turns that will rebalance the film and redirect the viewer all over the place within the story. And while some people may want to know more about what this could be about, I love that we aren’t getting much. Let us not know what to expect until we fully get in the theatre and experience what could shape up to be a masterpiece like Barbarian.

With the disappearance of the kids all in the one classroom at 2:17 AM, this film feels like it’s going to hit on the small town hysteria of what an event like this would do to people. Who would they blame or use as the scapegoat to explain what may be an other worldly phenomenon? Is this a metaphor for something bigger? One theory I have seen and am still chewing on is that it’s an allegory for the impact of school shootings on a community. Now it is exactly that, a theory, but it’s a very interesting thought to explore since we don’t have anything that says it couldn’t be that. Since we know so little about what the film is actually going for. Again, in a good way.

The cast looks extremely promising. Josh Brolin, Pedro Pascal, and Brian Tyree Henry all know how to help carry a film with a lot of substance, and Julia Garner is one of my favorite rising actresses since her work on Ozark. Sneaky to look out for Alden Ehrenreich also, he had a small but powerful part in Oppenheimer. This film could be too much for the casual viewers, or it may just be the summer hit that no one was expected and Zach Cregger can really start to be mentioned with some of the hottest directors out now if WEAPONS is a hit like Barbarian was.

C. A. ROETHLE