Last night, I wrote about Zach Cregger’s “Weapons” most likely coming out in 2025, and that part of the reason for Warner Bros’ excitement resided in a very successful test screening. Here’s one reaction from that screening.
This was a bigger and bolder movie than “Barbarian,” with so much confidence behind the camera that it perfectly managed to balance a tone between horror-comedy and small town drama. This felt like a natural successor to Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi’s earlier horror works with dashes of Bong Joon-Ho and 90s/00s horror (“Sleepy Hollow,” “What Lies Beneath,” “The Ring”).
So much horror fun, with compelling characters and a very original concept. It runs about 2 hours 20 minutes. The story is told from the perspective of multiple “random” characters during the period after a group of school children mysteriously vanish and the small town they reside in starts to go crazy in very violent and bizarre ways alongside the arrival of a mysterious visitor.
There is a lot of beguiling horror imagery here that’s seared into the brain, Cregger is more concerned with creating a hugely creepy atmosphere then loud jolting jump-scares and some very gruesome violence that’s used sparingly, and that up until the finale, features a glorious and batshit crowd pleasing moment.
“Weapons” tackles the disappearance of children in a small town; they all wake up in the middle of the night and walk out of their homes, not to be seen again. Everyone is bewildered, and the rest of the film tells the story from the perspective of multiple characters: teacher, detective, family.
There are also supernatural elements involved in the story — including witchcraft — but the plot is just as much about the inhabitants and their background stories as it is about the missing children. It’s quite the ambitious undertaking and if Cregger nails it on screen then it could turn into something really great.
The cast for “Weapons” includes the likes of Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Brian Tyree Henry, Tom Burke, Austin Abrams, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong and June Diane Raphael.