It has been an excellent summer for cinema. We found out Hollywood could still make a winning superhero film (“Superman”). We saw the return of the studio comedy that could deliver belly laughs to a crowded theater (“The Naked Gun”). We enjoyed franchise revivals full of verve and creativity (“Final Destination: Bloodlines” and “28 Years Later”). And we even saw an original, auteur-driven film receive critical and commercial success: Zach Cregger’s “Weapons.”
Cregger is cut from the same cloth as Jordan Peele. Both are horror filmmakers whose careers in sketch comedy gave them a knack for conjuring dark, absurd situations laced with biting social commentary. Cregger’s directorial debut, “Barbarian,” was a haunting and singular excavation of suburban malice, with the sins of the past compounding into a terrifying, incestual monster — it was also really funny. And his follow-up, “Weapons,” arrived in theaters a few weeks ago. The film had been eagerly anticipated for a long time, with an intense bidding war erupting in Hollywood for the script and its enigmatic trailers hooking people with an eerie and straightforward premise: An entire class of third graders wakes up in the middle of the night and sprints out of their homes, never to be seen again. But “Weapons” is about so much more than its literal conflict. The film is about how we have become weapons in the war on human dignity that has fractured our major institutions (major spoilers ahead).
“Weapons” jumps right into a community in crisis. Everyone is reeling from the disappearance of 17 children who seemingly ran away on their own volition. Cregger explores the varied ramifications of the incident by jumping between different characters’ perspectives, each representing a different sphere of society. We start with Julie, the third-grade teacher, who becomes the scapegoat of grieving parents desperate for answers, despite her being as clueless as they are. Their anger and suspicion only compound her sense of guilt over the incident and the painful realization that she didn’t truly know her students; her failure as a teacher has now possibly cost them their lives. We then jump to Archer, one of the affected parents who has been harassing Julie. His outward anger is really a mask for his deep sadness over his inability to understand why his son would run away from home; he now feels like a stranger to Archer. In a stunning, surreal dream sequence, he tearfully confronts his son, begs forgiveness for not loving him enough and pleads for him to come home. And then there’s Paul, one of the local police officers working to solve the case. But he and the rest of the law enforcement are woefully incompetent and have made no real progress.
Through the final perspective shift to Alex, the only student from the class who didn’t disappear, we find out what really happened. Alex’s creepy aunt, Gladys, rolled into town one day and, through some bloody witchcraft, started mind-controlling others. She turns them into impassive drones that she can steal life force from and command to kill others. She started by first seizing control of Alex’s parents and then blackmailed him into helping her control his classmates by threatening to hurt his parents if he refused. Gladys violates people’s freedom and makes them instrumental to her own ends. Thus, whether intentionally or not, Cregger has crafted a trenchant and terrifying allegory for our current social malaise through Gladys.
We are experiencing a constant onslaught on human dignity. The personalistic norm of treating people with love and respect and not as means to an end has vanished. Large language models have hijacked our thinking, algorithms have a stranglehold on our worldviews and social atomization has led to an increasingly lonely and disconnected world. Gladys’ body-snatching scheme literalizes a pervasive evil corrupting society, something we all feel deep down but can’t quite articulate: We are no longer in control of ourselves. Our right to self-determination has vanished, and we have become brainwashed by forces we are helpless against. We have become weapons of hate and fear, while evil becomes more powerful.
And in the face of this great evil, our traditional institutions are ineffectual and useless. Teachers don’t understand the wild and toxic trends and influencers that are captivating their students instead of them; parents have no idea what is actually going on in their child’s mind; and law enforcement can’t keep up with an increasingly dysfunctional and mentally ill populace. Instead of asking more critical questions about what is at the heart of this breakdown, we blame each other. Instead of promoting dialogue, we point fingers at each other to deflect from any sense of shared responsibility. The crisis in “Weapons” is a crisis every community in this country is facing: How do we deal with incomprehensible, uncontrollable forces that are tearing us apart? However, overcoming our crisis might be harder than defeating an eccentric old witch.
