Observations #1: Weapons Hits the Mark
-or- When the Vodka No Longer Works
Note: This is the first entry in the ‘Observations’ series, which will feature quick take writings on timely subjects released between more in-depth pieces covering major topics in the media and entertainment world.
Speaking of in-depth pieces…stay tuned for > Part 2 of Making the Party Fun Again: The Shifting Landscape of Our Streaming Film and TV Ecosystem. Coming soon. See here for Part 1.
In the moments of doubt and grief, we tell ourselves stories to cope and create meaning.
Many fables endure to serve this purpose. Passed down across the centuries, they resolve in the overarching moral: you will encounter bad experiences and awful people. Expect to be hurt. You must learn to live anew in the aftermath.
These shared tales help us process pain and make sense of destructive forces—whether we wish to call them chaos or evil. Simply put, it is the great, ghoulish unknown coming for a little visit. Doctors leaving a voicemail to discuss results. Someone harassing you on the street. A car pulling into the driveway to change your life forever. These are the stories we remember most, because they capture our desperation to demand understanding of terrible events—and the silence we get in return.
And, it’s near impossible to conjure these types of tales for film and TV with any true emotion and intelligence when you’re tasked to produce a script for some watered-down sequel in a saturated marketplace of disposable entertainment. Whether spotlighting rhinoplastied superheroes or talking animals, most of today's stories prioritize temporary escape over lasting resonance. The trials and travails dramatized in modern-day comic book mythologies and regurgitated IP dross often wrap everything up with conclusions scrubbed clean of doubt or uncertainty. As a consequence, the majority of our era’s popular films are transitory and interchangeable. If you want to be effective and substantive when talking about loss and hope, you must break out the pen and paper because of the heart-wrenching need to do so. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s not romantic bullshit, either. It’s quality assurance. Motivations cannot be based solely on monetary gain or fulfilling creative aims committed purely to exceptional (but often soulless) craft. You need to actually feel it.
This is where Weapons (2025) comes from. It is therapy via horror. Almost literally. Written and directed by Zach Cregger, the film’s script acted as a vehicle for the author to explore how people handle sadness and rage after a devastating tragedy. Cregger, a talented young filmmaker who surprised Hollywood with the success of his debut feature Barbarian in 2022, became well-acquainted with tragedy. On August 6, 2021, the writer-director’s close friend and former collaborator, Trevor Moore, died suddenly after falling from a balcony.1 He was only 41. Out of nowhere, a random accident ended the man’s life. Attempting to deal with this shocking death, Cregger turned to Weapons as a kind of cathartic reckoning: "The movie's about that overwhelming emotion you get when you lose someone close to you [...] This script was me venting about that. So I didn't explode.”2 As it turned out, this reckoning yielded a film that's terrifying, devilishly funny, and oddly comforting. It invites viewers to sit down for a meal with evil, then ask for seconds.
The premise and plot of Weapons are simple but riddled with mystery, like all good fables. One night at 2:17 a.m., in a nondescript American suburb, seventeen children from the same classroom of a local grade school simultaneously run out of their homes, not to be seen again. Authorities are baffled. The school teacher who taught the children before they disappeared is viewed with suspicion. Distraught parents cry for an explanation. Structured in the tradition of Rashomon (1950), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Magnolia (1999), the film shows how locals handle the event’s fallout through a series of chapters told from the perspectives of several different characters. Some of the characters hunt for clues. Some of them follow standard operating procedures in their given institutional professions, praying answers will materialize. All of them, regardless, flail and try to survive their own dilemmas, addictions and diversions against the backdrop of the unfathomable disaster that has left a psychological crater at the center of the traumatized community.
Not wanting to spoil the fun, I will not divulge the reason eventually provided for why the children suddenly take flight into the night. I will say that the ultimate reveal, though, is not so much a resolution as a final set of lingering questions: what do you do when life doesn’t completely spell out for you how to navigate loss? Even if you discover what brings pain to others, does the culprit—whether human or otherwise—not contain some unknowable agency that drives its actions?
It is by no means neat and tidy. No easy answers. Snaps of sorcery and deployed superpowers cannot promise peace of mind. You can use magical thinking to help salve psychic wounds, but the underlying problem remains. The weapons are everywhere. No one is coming to save the day, nor offer real reasons for what happens. You love and live while you can, learning and creating anew in the aftermath. Quite the children’s tale, no?
This is not, in other words, a film for the faint of heart. However, it is a deftly crafted and multifaceted work that satisfies a desire for defibrillator-strength thrills while simultaneously not preaching its themes and ideas (an issue plaguing my beloved horror genre right now) or pandering to the lowest common denominator. A rarity these days.
But is it an indication of things to come in the industry? Made on a budget of approximately $39 million, Weapons was initially fought over by a number of studios in a highly publicized bidding war.3,4 Warner Bros.’ New Line division ultimately won the rights. It is encouraging that 1). Many industry players saw the potential in Zach Cregger’s work; 2). A major studio like Warner Bros., in particular, took a chance on the property, then offered a theatrical run and resisted ripping the movie to shreds in development hell; and, most importantly, 3). original storytelling that honors cinematic tradition without being pretentious or self-indulgent was able to find an invested, receptive audience. As of this writing, Weapons has grossed over $240 million on its way to becoming one of the most profitable releases of 2025.5 These are exciting signs of what could be coming our way.
Indeed, perhaps audiences are ready for engaging stories that aren't algorithmically designed to hit every quick fix receptor that numbs and helps us avoid our sorrows, doubts and fears. Perhaps we want fresh content that makes us feel and think again. The success of Weapons suggests we do.
***
Throughout Weapons, the school teacher of the children who have disappeared is shown repeatedly going into convenience shops of one type or another. At first, we see her at a liquor store reaching for what seems to be a daily, long-running succession of vodka bottles purchased in bulk. Then, when she returns to the same store to replenish her supply, a local woman attacks the teacher for sleeping with her husband. Another way to dull the pain gone awry.
When we see the teacher later in the film, this time running through an unremarkable but familiar-looking gas station, she is being chased by something far more uncompromising in its pursuit. The teacher, played with a feisty sensitivity by Julia Garner, cannot outrun the insatiable thing that hunts her now. She can no longer drown out the depression, avoid the problem through diversion, or move onward from her bad luck of being the teacher, or the 'witch’—as the locals paint in dripping red letters across her car—who happened to be teaching when tragedy struck. No matter how difficult, she must learn how to face it. The film makes us face it, too.
Hopefully, more studios and filmmakers will follow suit, delivering movies with the same power and unique voice to opening day crowds hungry for a tale well told that will carry on in their deepest thoughts long after the last credits roll to black.
Sources
"'The Whitest Kids U Know' Co-Founder Trevor Moore's Death Ruled An Accident." Deadline, https://deadline.com/2021/12/the-whitest-kids-u-know-co-founder-trevor-moores-death-ruled-an-accident-1234899712/.
Murrell, Morgan. "'Weapons' Is A Wild Horror Movie, But These 21 Facts Have Me Looking At It Completely Differently." BuzzFeed, https://www.buzzfeed.com/morganmurrell/weapons-movie-behind-the-scenes-facts.
"Why 'Weapons' Is the Best Thing to Happen to Horror This Year." No Film School, https://nofilmschool.com/weapons-best-horror.
"New Line Wins Intense Auction for 'Weapons,' the New Movie From 'Barbarian' Filmmaker Zach Cregger." The Hollywood Reporter, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/barbarian-director-zach-creggers-weapons-1235308587/.
"Weapons." Box Office Mojo, https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl3882385409/?ref_=bo_hm_rd.
…and, “Beware of Darkness”.
This is the end. Want more?