"Weapons" Review: Finding the Horror in Suburbia

Weapons begins with a horrifying premise: an entire class of elementary school kids, save one, run away from home in the middle of the night. What follows is an unsettling psycho-supernatural thriller, told in pieces from each character’s perspective, as a small community finds themselves caught between solving the mystery and facing their demons.

As he did in Barbarian, Zach Cregger unearths suburbia’s disturbing secrets through a fragmented narrative. He makes us witness damaged yet relatable people as they peek below perfectly manicured lawns. Weapons is the kind of psychological horror film that plays with its viewer, enticing us with schadenfreude and judgement only to reveal our implicit bias.

Suburban dread has been explored by iconic films across genres, from American Beauty to Pleasantville. However idyllic and peaceful those neighborhoods appear, they conceal a toxic underbelly of misogyny and racism. Zach Cregger, whose career began with the Whitest Kids U’Know (WKUK), tunes into the tension between domestic bliss and violence as inspiration for his horror films. Many WKUK sketches satirized the emotionally unavailable white dads who ignored their kids and abused their wives. As went the punchline of one famous sketch, “Nothin’ wrong with that.”

The unavailable white dad in Weapons is Archer (Josh Brolin), who blames the kids’ teacher, Justine (Julia Garner) for their disappearance. Brolin is appropriately gruff and captured accordingly — his dominating presence fills the frame, even in moments of vulnerability.

Archer believes in an aggressive approach, whether that’s heavily pursuing clues or harassing Justine. His character symbolizes the angst of suburban masculinity: he wants to be a provider and father, He lacks the emotional intelligence to even tell his missing son “I love you.” Once the kids go missing, Archer has lost both stability and control.

Cregger shows this by making us doubt Archer’s perception. When we see from his point of view, it is fantasy, whether a horrific version of his son or a massive automatic rifle marring the night sky. Archer does not live in the emotional realm but in a world of artifice: the barriers he’s created between himself and redemption.

Justine is something very threatening to Archer and the other grieving parents: someone emotionally available to her students but also single and alcoholic — anathema to the picture-perfect community they crave. What she lacks in restraint or self-awareness, she makes up for in her desire for connection, however flawed.

Under Cregger’s direction, Garner delivers an impressively chaotic performance, bolstered by a powerful mix of POV shots and emotional closeups. She’s a bit unlikeable, almost insufferable, and yet we relate to her all too well.

As in Barbarian, Cregger excels at turning innocuous shots of perfectly manicured lawns and houses into something insidious. The home of Justine’s sole surviving student, Alex (Cary Christopher) looks picturesque but hides disgusting secrets, as the other characters eventually learn. Our first hint that something is wrong is that the front door opens automatically when Alex gets home, then closes just as smoothly. No wavering, no pushing or propping — no hint of a loving parent welcoming home their son. It’s a simple practical effect that builds incredible tension. The audience now knows: this home is sick, artificial devoid of humanity.

That aesthetic carries throughout the film, from distressingly dark shots of children’s spaces to seemingly innocent pictures that are just a bit off. The cinematography, combined with the nonlinear storytelling and angsty performances, makes Weapons as unsettling as it is intriguing.

We are left dissociating even as we laugh at the film’s darkly comedic scenes. The comedy is a truth serum that forces us to reconcile our emotional unintelligence with the tragedy at hand.

Weapons builds dread that never quite releases the viewer, digging into their ugliest fears as they question their own judgment. And with a supernatural twist, it goes beyond recent years’ glut of “elevated horror” and becomes a delightfully dark tale of grief, misplaced anger, and subconscious bias.

You can read my in-depth commentary on Weapons here.