Weapons (Zach Cregger, August 8, 2025) Movie • Page 14

That’s valid, but I for one was very glad this didn’t dive very deep into the grief aspect. Very few horror movies these days actually do a good job of that imho.

 

This is all perfectly valid and reasonable

 

It’s also bizarre because if someone actually disagrees with something another said then we should actually discuss it! That’s kinda the whole point of engaging with movies and what Rowan and I were doing

Whereas if all you have to say amounts to “I don’t actually disagree with anything you’re saying, but it simply isn’t a thing that bothers me” then why are you criticizing someone for wanting to talk about it? It’s not like I’m forcing any of you to engage in that discussion lol

 

I watched Barbarian yesterday and there is a scene where cops are aloof in that too. I think it says more about what Cregger thinks about cops lol

 

The thing is Creggar isn’t Aster or Peele. But he’s also not trying to be, he pretty clearly states that in interviews. He turns his brain off when writing he doesn’t have anything to say politically. The movie is the movie. I think he’s trying to make entertaining movies. He’s done that. But at a certain point, for me, it’s going to put a little bit of a ceiling on some of them. I don’t need LAYERS, but they’re nice.

 

Megan truly is GOATed for that

 

you still think I had you in my mind when I was posting. I didn’t!

 

Alright this is just reaching a weirdly embarrassing level of lying and doubling down here, I don't know why you're insisting on something so obviously false. The only other person to say anything about the issue with Alex's parents was Victor Emerita on Friday morning, who you had already responded to lol. There's literally nobody else who your mocking post could have been about, and I don't know why you're pretending instead of just apologizing or even letting it die. But you do you, I guess

 

Zach Cregger has got the juice and is 2 for 2 in my opinion.. holy fucking shit that was awesome and so glad I avoided the trailers and anything spoilers related, I was fucking locked in from beginning to end!

 

I think where I disagree with this on a general level (not talking about just this movie now) is that I think mystery stories are somewhat unique. The ultimate reveal/unraveling of a mystery is the most climatic point of the story, just like a major plot twist. So if it doesn't land or make retrospective sense to someone then that's likely to heavily impact their perception of the story. The plot and decisions of the characters are more crucial to the quality of the work than in, as you said, a straightforward fairy tale where the thematic elements matter far more than the rationality/irrationality of a given character's actions. A mystery story is graded on a harsher curve because when a major character's actions don't make sense, it can feel like all the build-up and suspension was leading to an end result that wasn't fully thought through

 

You got me here tbh I will not under any circumstances defend cops

 

That's also where a lot of the enjoyment of satirical noir movies like The Long Goodbye or The Big Lebowski or The Nice Guys or Under the Silver Lake comes from -- the main characters going down a rabbit hole of trying to uncover a mysterious grand conspiracy, but there's so many bizarre red herrings and the characters just get pushed around from one event to the next, with the end result basically mocking the protagonist/audience for thinking that everything would ever get wrapped up perfectly, since that's not how life actually works

 

It’s funny listening to the Cregger interview on The Big Picture and the interviewer kind of throwing out these references to other movies and exploring deeper themes and Cregger’s just kind of like (paraphrasing) “The references are the most obvious movies you could think of and there no huge, deep themes. I was working through trauma and grief.”

 

I loved that interview. He's such a great foil to Sean's intellectualism in that conversation. He just seems like a normal guy who's just happy to get to play with his toys on a public scale. Which, speaking of, it killed me hearing him talk about being late to meet Josh Brolin because he was playing with Legos.

 

Hahaha. Agree. I would rather die than deal with a disappointed Josh Brolin.

 

On the topic of why Alex was overlooked by the adults in the film, it makes the most thematic sense. The story shows how tragedy turns adults on each other often at the expense of the kids. We'll go on a witch hunt when the actual witch is right under our noses.

No one's gonna address the obviousness of the one child left behind when you can villanize the teacher. It's a heightened fictional example, but it speaks to something very real.

 

My heart actually sank for him. Hahahaha.

 

Something else I just thought about, it probably wasn't completely intentional but Through all of the children going missing, through Gladys using Marcus to try to take out Justine, Gladys stood her ground there and figured she could easily talk/manipulate her way out of suspicion, and she was right. But as soon as a cop gets actively involved, she immediately is like "alright this town is actually gonna take this seriously now that a cop's gone missing, we gotta ditch town" lmao. Pretty fun detail for my headcanon of cop commentary

 

Yeah the whole story / witchhunt / Alex's isolation and abuse works very well on a thematic level imo, even with my issues with the plot.

Though now it weirds me out because of Cregger trying to downplay that, as you and Zilla were talking about. As soon as they showed the dream assault rifle, it immediately clicked to me that the whole incident is a lot like a school shooting metaphor (not that that's what it 100% ended up being, but just what I thought in the moment and what I think is still apt in a lot of ways -- one kid survivor, grieving parents wanting an explanation and wrongly blaming scapegoats who are victims themselves, the incident ultimately stemming from an abused child, police being useless to prevent or investigate it, even when the kids are saved they're still explicitly traumatized for life, etc).

The end result is more complicated than that one metaphor. But so I find it weird that Cregger apparently doesn't even see those things in the film? Even if they weren't his original intention

 

He could be exaggerating, but authorial intent doesn't mean something more profound can't be communicated anyway. Some of my favorite movies of all-time I love for themes the writer didn't necessarily intend.

 

It’s really amazing that this was written at the peak of Cregger’s feelings of grief and loss and yet its not another “elevated” horror movie about TRAUMA*

I mean yes theres trauma and grief and loss in there at the center of the premise but you know what I mean

 

It is better and more unique than a lot of traditionally "elevated" horror from the past decade tbh