Zach Cregger is a director that immediately sold me on his vision with the release of his 2022 film, Barbarian. It was one of my favourites of that year and, as a debut horror feature for Cregger, it showed he had an immense amount of promise. With his background in the ‘The Whitest Kids U’ Know’ troupe, his work is in comedy and, as directors like Jordan Peele or the Phillippou brothers show, the different genres marry each other quite well. Comedy is all about getting an intense reaction out of your audience, just like horror. Barbarian marries the two genres with its skillful blend of extremely grueling and dark horror and a suitable amount of black comedy that all seamlessly works together in one package. It builds the characters well enough to keep you placed with them when things inevitably get insane. While the content was sublime and riveting, another thing that stood out was the attention to the craft, which felt like a master at work. Knowing exactly where the camera should be at any given point, how to structure the film as a whole to feed the plot to the audience at an appropriate speed; it is all there and it works brilliantly. To top it off though, it was a horror film that felt fresh and that is certainly a rarity. Most horror of the past few years has been attempts to ape things like Get Out or Hereditary and Cregger seems to have struck the perfect balance in between. This is no different with his second horror release: Weapons. Though a much bigger scale film, Cregger manages to use all of what worked in Barbarian and build on it to make a masterful piece of horror, full of dread and laced with just the right amount of absurdist humour. Weapons is not one to miss.

Weapons is focused on a fictional Pennsylvania town called Maybrook that is reeling from a recent tragedy. An opening monologue from a child tells us that a month ago, almost a whole class of children got out of their own beds at 2:17am, stepped out of their houses and ran into the night, never to be seen again. The class teacher, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), came into the class the next day to find only one of her children, named Alex (Cary Christopher), had turned up, sending the school and the town into disarray. Parents of the missing children are calling Justine a witch and believe she knows more than she’s letting on. With the police not making any progress, people like Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) take it upon themselves to try and find the children, but nothing logically makes any sense. With the school opening back up again, the town has started to try and settle into a sense of normality again, and it is apparent that with the weight of everything that has happened, this will not be easy. The bulk of this film shows different characters’ experiences in this fractured town, slowly unrraveling secrets that get darker and more insane as the story goes on.

The way this film is structured is like Barbarian on a much broader scale. That film loves to play around with two main character perspectives, and it generally switches with each revelation, allowing that moment to really set into the audience. It is a device that is difficult to use, especially in abundance, due to it sometimes impacting the pacing detrimentally and making the story not feel like it has any proper flow. Weapons has multiple different character chapters, all separated by a title card by the name of the character. The first two are Justine and Archer, but then we get further stories as major events happen. The cut-off point of Archer’s story, for example, is a major story beat and the first real horror sequence. It is vastly entertaining to watch the film circle back to that point, building anticipation to it, whilst also offering a different perspective of what is happening at that point in other character stories. At no point do any of these stories feel unnecessary as they all build to an end point that flows seamlessly into the larger story. None of this can be done without the information flow and pacing being top-notch, and it is up to the task. What’s more is each story builds up in its use of comedy and horror, slowly easing the audience in but getting more gruesome, dark and funny because of how over-the-top it is. The stories focusing on the cop, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), and a drug addict named James (Austin Abrams), are where the comedy in particular really starts to shine. After all, they have no real connection with the missing kids but are stuck in this town clearly affected by it. This is obviously very different to Justine and Archer’s stories because they are very much involved with the mystery. Each story acts as a catalyst in elevating either the horror, comedy or both and once everything comes to a head, you get the full force of everything, all guns blazing. It is very neatly and satisfyingly structured, which is key to making this bizarre tonal mix work as perfectly as it does.

The story being told here is very boisterous and brutal, but subtextually, it gets even more interesting. There is a lot here derived from other films and TV, but it does stand on its own feet very well too. It has the shaken small town feel from that of Twin Peaks and Stranger Things and there is that grief-ridden drive for answers from things like Villeneuve’s Prisoners. Like in all these influences, the main fear of weapons is that dark core beneath the idyllic surface. A tragedy like that of this film is unprecedented for any town, but especially for one that seems so unremarkable. Similarly, it has parallels to that American nightmare of horrible tragedies like school shootings just leaving a town completely broken and empty. That fear that something will just come out of nowhere and change their lives forever. There is a scene where Paul arrests James and is incredibly fearful that, whilst searching his pockets, he will get pricked by a needle that infects him. It is unlikely that even if he did get stabbed, there would be some horrific disease immediately entering his bloodstream, but it is that underlying panic and fear that this film represents. The idea that something, or someone, is waiting in the shadows and ready to strike at the heart of an individual, a family or even a community like we see here. Finally, it is also crucially about control and how the person holding the weapon is always the one trying to control other people for their own gain or to have a sense of power. Weapons really is the perfect title for this film as it reflects all these different subtextual readings under one umbrella.

Weapons is a horror masterpiece and I have not been able to stop thinking about it since seeing it. Its story and themes are so interesting, but the best endorsement that I can give is that it is an absolute riot to watch. You will be squirming uncomfortably one minute and uncontrollably laughing the next, and it is magical that you can get that response and it all still feel tonally sound. Cregger once again strikes that balance he found in Barbarian, but in an even more daring manner, taking it all to the next level. He gets the most out of his fantastic cast, the camera is always dynamic and positioned just right in scenes and the script that ties everything together is wild in the best way. You will not know what is going to happen next, and the joy is allowing yourself to be subject to this wild ride. That is what horror cinema should be about and it’s what makes it such a thrilling genre. Weapons is the most thrilling experience I have had at the cinema so far this year, and it will take a lot to top it.