When Justine (Julia Garner) comes to her elementary school classroom one morning, she is surprised to see it empty of all of her students except for one: Alex (Cary Christopher), a shy student who sits alone in the back of the classroom.  After some initial investigation, it is determined that the other students all got out of their beds and ran way from their homes at 2:17am.  Archer (Josh Brolin), one of the grieving fathers of the missing children places the blame on Justine and demands answers. 

For Zach Cregger‘s sophomore feature, he delivers Weapons for Warner Brothers, a 128 minute mosaic of urban paranoia.  The film marks a major leap forward in scope from Barbarian (2022), an almost two-hander as opposed to this multi-chaptered piece that delivers its narrative across various point of view characters.  Even with this greater ambition, Cregger maintains his tone and style, offsetting the unsettling nature of this story with kernels of humor throughout.  That is not to mistake the deeply unsettling Weapons as a horror-comedy, but Cregger threads the needle of highlighting the absurdity of life as it moves on, even in the face of massive tragedy. 

The film opens following Justine as the town is ready to turn against her given her connection to the missing children.  Cregger puts her character through the ringer here as she suffers scorn and pointed stares as she makes her way through town on her daily business.  What he does so well on the page, and what Garner does so well with the performance, is this extended humiliation ritual adds so many other layers to the character so that audiences never quite feel that she is totally off the hook here, either, and even before the film begins to more fully disperse the information we need.  From her laser focus in the liquor store to pick up two bottles of vodka at least twice across the various timelines we see of the events of the film, to comments made by her principal, Marcus (Benedict Wong), about being let go from her previous school district do to an inappropriate relationship with one of the other teachers there, we can not help but begin to feel she may just be that pariah role which the town sees her as and our hesitation to immediately jump to that conclusion is rooted in being unaccustomed to our main characters being such blatant outcasts; again, not to be confused with underdogs.  Couple this with Justine’s own poor judgement seen across our initial and limited time with her – following Alex home, knocking on his door, staring through his windows – she becomes a hard person to find sympathy for as more and more situational evidence props up an easy argument for the prosecution in the court of public opinion.   

As her narrative begins to stagnate, Cregger shifts gears with the first of many chapter markers, this time following Archer.  The shift can understandably still be met with some resistance from the audience, not so much because we need to eliminate what we just saw as the viewpoints and arcs covered are varied enough that there is not so much overlap that is becomes a suburban Rashomon (1950), but simply because the segregation of these characters and narratives makes the overall film feel more like smaller individual stories than a singular sweeping narrative.  At their core, all stories are essentially smaller individual characters working through a shared narrative, but with such a clear chapter structure – not to be mistaken for an act structure – it can often drive narrative momentum to a halt.  Such is the case in Weapons, but thankfully Cregger has given each of his chapter leading characters – Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) a police officer, James (Austin Abrams) a local degenerate, and Marcus – enough motivation and struggle that we never lose interest in the plot, even if we spend much of that first half not quite sure what anything is building too especially since Justine, our initial window into and understanding the world of the film, is largely absent from these other character’s lives.  

It also needs to be said that this middle section as we work through the tapestry of suburban life is some of the most competent filmmaking seen from Cregger to date. Nevertheless, it is still a hurdle within the context of the film as it strays so far from the setup that is feels meandering, and instead of capping off this strange occurrence with something akin to the raining down of frogs as seen in Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Magnolia (1999) or the earthquake from Robert Altman’s Short Cuts (1993), Cregger opts to conclude with a simple bookending narration from one of the students (Scarlett Sher), reciting the story with enough remove that it feels like she is telling an urban legend. Cregger will give us answers rooted more in the traditional, supernatural sense, but it just is not the same flavor of strange rooted in the sane which makes Weapons unfortunately and unsatisfyingly framed despite the robust narrative material contained therein.

It is not until the final and longest chapter that things begin to get tied together and that responsibility lies on the small shoulders of Alex, precisely played by the young Christopher.  Being the key that unlocks the narrative is a large ask of any actor, but to put it on such a new talent – only his second feature role after a resume built on shorts and television – is a massive gamble that pays off tenfold.  Christopher shows incredible range, surely under Cregger’s tutelage but there is a naturalness to his confusion, distress, and ultimate desperation as his life begins to fall apart when his Aunt Glady’s (Amy Madigan) comes to stay with him. 

Madigan, to her credit, injects a frightening energy into the film, amplified by Trish Summerville’s work as costumer designer as well as the efforts by Leo Satkovich and Melizah Anguiano Wheat, department heads of makeup and hair, respectively.  That is not to say that her presence is completely confined to her near-indescribable look, but the actress is able to come in late in the film and completely commandeer the narrative as if she had been there the whole time.  Editor Joe Murphy understood the power of this performance as he laboriously holds the shot while she makes grand entrance which cinematographer Larkin Seiple captures from behind the frosted glass and under the fluorescent lights of Principal Marcus’ office.  Her bright orange hair, smudged makeup, and kooky outfits upset the suburban-sterile nature of the office and are but a precursor for how she is about to upend this quaint community content to live their lives on their own little tracks, to and from work or school and back home to their manicured lawns, white picket fences, and cookie cutter homes where the door or siding color are the only avenues for expression, and even that is dictated by the curated offerings from a catalog. 

Gladys, in addition to injecting the most overt supernatural presence into the film that until now was operating in more in the realm of a believably sinister thriller, also brings into play a new theme to contend with.  As she infects her sister (Callie Schuttera) and brother-in-law’s (Whitmer Thomas) home, not unlike the parasites which Justine was teaching her class about the afternoon before they disappeared, she shows all the tell-tale signs of a predator as she assumes the role of Alex’s guardian and threatens the boy should he divulge their secret relationship.  This theme is explored more thoroughly and with a little more nuance than the initial conceit of the film which Weapons opens with and lends the film its name, that is, an examination of a town in the wake of a school shooting.  That opening allows both Justine and Archer to have incredibly dynamic chapters, but that middle section as it tries to flesh out the wider world while still sowing seeds of the supernatural, end up feeling like a drag more than something providing momentum. With such a wide net cast as far as themes are concerned, Weapons feels more like an overambitious first script, eager to get out everything on its mind lest opportunity not present itself again.  

While Cregger seems to have bitten off more than he can chew thematically, as an actual plotted narrative, Weapons is always fascinating to watch.  He taps once again in the social suburban fears, dressing them in more traditional horror elements to – and to be knowingly glib here – show that sometimes the monsters are the people right next door because we are so accustomed to turning a blind eye to the signs in the name of politeness or comfort; neglect goes unreported, addiction goes untreated, police aggression is just a part of life, and infidelity runs rampant.  This is represented in how simply and matter-of-factly Justine is able to walk into the liquor store and pick up her two bottles of vodka as if it is nothing, yet James’ drug habit is met with scorn.  Sure, there is a bit of comparison of apples and oranges going on there given the unique natures of each character’s vice of choice, but at the core, both characters struggle with addiction yet only one of them is really looked down on for that reason by the community.  Cregger has tapped into a vein of new, modern anxieties that run far deeper than simply keeping up with the Joneses, and while his films do not often come to any real thematic conclusions in favor of genre experiments, it is hard to blame the filmmaker for these shortcomings as society has yet to legitimately contented with answering the problems his films are railing against.  With roots in both comedy and horror – two genres that are primed to dissect the current – he nevertheless presents a competent film boiling over with the anxiety and the frustrations of the moment; a genre-informed exaggeration of the very real fears faced by Target mom’s who take refuge behind their zip code and the repeated mantra that “it can’t happen here” despite turning on the news to learn that “here” is creeping closer and closer to anywhere that someone may call home.