'Weapons' Review: A Haunting Tale of Grief
Cregger solidifies himself as a one of the best new voices in horror
Premise - “When all but one child from the same classroom mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.”
Director - Zach Cregger
Writer - Zach Cregger
Noteworthy cast - Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, Austin Abrams, and Amy Madigan
My thoughts - On your first watch of Weapons, it is so easy to get caught up in the big mystery the movie poses. And how could you not? Especially after months and months of marketing material pushing the missing kids. Our brains are wired to want an answer. And not just any answer, a satisfying one.
Even if you didn’t come in looking for answers, you quickly become so entranced by the tension Cregger creates through individual scenes & the narrative structure that you too now want answers.
This hyper fixation on wanting a satisfying answer has left many disappointed by the film. And they aren’t necessarily wrong for that, they just aren’t viewing the story through the lens that Cregger is.
On a rewatch (when there is no more mystery) you so easily see the whole thing as the portrait of grief that Cregger intended. A sweeping tale about how we handle it as a society and the ways in which we try and cope with the unimaginable.
Sometimes people turn to alcohol
Sometimes people look for answers where they don’t exist
Sometimes people fixate on what they could have done or could have said
Sometimes people bully others
Sometimes people abuse power to give them the illusion of control
Sometimes people turn to sex
Sometimes people try to turn it into financial gain
Sometimes people simply try to normalize & continue life as if nothing happened
Sometimes people unknowingly enable it
Sometimes people can’t talk about it and have no choice but to keep it down
You see, Cregger didn’t sit down and write this movie with some crazy ending in mind. He sat down to write these characters and this story after he experienced unimaginable loss and grief himself. When he started writing the characters he just put everything he was thinking and feeling into them. When it got time for there to be an ending, he just wrote what felt right.
This was always about grief and never about how the story ends.
So are things hopeless? Is there anything we can do to stop grief in the first place?
Not entirely. Wickedness is inevitable in fallen this world. Parasites will always exist in society. And there isn’t always good reasons for why they do.
While we can’t stop grief entirely, we can fight it. We can stand up to it & go toe to toe with it (like Alex does) or we can lean on community & communicate with one another to fight it (Justine & Archer). Any approach outside of that may medicate you in the short term, but in the long run will inevitably lead to death.
Really liked this movie on the first watch. Loved it in a rewatch!
How did it do at the box office? - So far has grossed $108.3 million ($64 million domestic) on an estimated $38 million budget
Did it win any Oscars? - TBD
Where to watch - Currently in movie theaters