Mild spoilers for “Weapons” follow.
“Barbarian” director Zach Cregger proves he’s no one-hit-wonder with “Weapons,” a wild, funny, and scary new horror epic that once again finds the filmmaker surprising audiences with twists and turns. Cregger has a gift for both blending horror and comedy while thinking up clever ways to knock his audience off-balance with shocking surprises. One of the reasons “Barbarian” made such an impact was that it kept us all on our toes as it’s scary story unfolded, and arguably the most memorable moment in “Barbarian” arrives halfway through the film when the narrative suddenly switches from a dark and scary basement in Michigan to the sunny Los Angeles coast.
After spending the first half of the film with Tess (Georgina Campbell), a young woman who checks into an Airbnb and gets more than she bargained for, we’re abruptly introduced to a brand new character we’ve never met before, almost as if we’ve accidentally stumbled into a completely different movie. This new character is AJ, a d-bag actor who sees his career torpedoed when one of his co-stars (correctly) accuses him of sexual assault. AJ is played by certified scream king Justin Long, and Long does a great job somehow making the character both very funny and very detestable. AJ is, without question, a bad guy, but one of the fun twists of Cregger’s script is that it fools us into thinking it might find a way for AJ to redeem himself and become a better person. Spoiler alert: that’s not what happens, and AJ eventually gets his much-earned comeuppance.
Long popped up in numerous horror movies over the years before “Barbarian,” including “Jeepers Creepers,” “Drag Me to Hell,” “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” and “Tusk.” And now, he can add “Weapons” to that list, too, because he reunites with Cregger for a brief but memorable cameo.
Justin Long plays a parent of one of the missing kids in Weapons
By now, you probably are familiar with the eye-catching of premise of “Weapons,” since it’s been effectively conveyed in the film’s marketing. In the town of Maybrook, 17 children up and vanish one night/morning when they mysteriously leave their houses at the same time (2:17 AM), walk off into the darkness, and disappear.
The event sends shockwaves through the town, and everyone wants answers. The missing kids have one major thing in common: they were all part of the same class taught by elementary school teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner). Because of this, many of the parents of the missing kids, including Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), cast a suspicious eye on Gandy, wondering if she knows more than she’s saying.
Cregger’s “Weapons” script is sprawling, telling a twisty narrative through several different points of view. One of those points of view is from Archer, who undertakes his own investigation into the mystery when he feels the local cops aren’t doing enough. Archer’s amateur sleuthing takes him to the house of one of the missing kids, and that’s where Long comes in: he plays a father to one of the missing. Long only shows up for one scene, playing his character as accommodating but also confused, and it serves as a fun callback to “Barbarian.” At the very least, Long’s “Weapons” character seems to be a much nicer guy than AJ.
“Weapons” is now in theaters.
