Weapons (2025)

Satire is a Weapon That Cuts Both Ways

I pride myself on Kicking the Seat being a one-man show–but when fellow critic John Erik Mann dropped this bombshell on my virtual desk, I couldn’t help but run it. For reasons that will soon become clear, John’s original publisher yanked the piece at the last minute, while allowing him to shop it elsewhere.

Presented here is an uncut and uncensored transcript of an encounter with a representative from a mid-size, L.A.-based movie market research firm specializing in out-of-theater reactions. Following an advance press-and-public screening of writer/director Zach Cregger’s latest film, Weapons, last week, John was asked to participate in a rare second interview about a film that didn’t at all sit right with him.

Both parties agreed that John could record the conversation for possible publication, as long as the firm and the representative’s identity remain anonymous.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

Rep: Our junior rep tells me you hated the movie.

John Erik Mann: Yeah, it wasn’t my favorite.

Rep: No, no, no. She says you hated it. Like, you were yelling at her coming out of the screening. Is that true?

JEM: There was no yelling. Might’ve been some hand gestures, but I couldn’t get worked up enough to yell. I was too depressed.

Rep: I’m sorry you felt that way. What didn’t you like about it?

JEM: I’ve got a car coming in 10 minutes, so there’s not nearly enough time to–

Rep: Your feedback would really help us a lot. Honestly, all the reactions have been crazy positive. You’re the first person I’ve talked to after these last couple of screenings who wasn’t drooling all over themselves–and me. It’d be nice to have a conversation where no one says, “Horror’s back”, or, “Cregger is the next Stephen King.”..

Tell me, please. I can take it.

JEM: Alright, let’s start with Stephen King. Weapons is what you’d get if Neon released a third-rate mash-up of It and Children of the Corn, as adapted by James Gunn.

Rep: Okaaaay…

JEM: Did you see The Monkey earlier this year?

Rep: Oh, yes! Oz Perkins killed that movie!

JEM: No, he didn’t. The only thing he killed was every bit of suspense, imagination, and pure terror from King’s short story. He made it into a joke-fest, just like Gunn did with Superman last month. Every potentially horrific moment ended with a gag, a joke, a blood geyser, or a wacky character mugging for the camera. Same thing with this movie.

Rep: Isn’t that “horror comedy”?

JEM: This is different. The promotional materials for Weapons or The Monkey sold both of them as straight-up horror movies. The Weapons trailer makes it look like a spooky little mystery about demon kids or something, with maybe a hint of witchcraft.

And, sure, the first few minutes of the film set that story up, but what follows is nearly a half-hour of Julia Garner’s character drinking, slinking around town, and seducing her engaged ex-boyfriend. And it’s, like, “Did I stumble into a remake of Young Adult?” 

Rep: Some might call that “establishing characters”.

JEM: It’s called jerking the audience around. And having a giant “Boom” sound every time you switch scenes (or even shots within a scene) doesn’t get you Horror Movie cred. It’s just annoying.

Rep: All of our respondents say there’s plenty of horror all throughout the movie. And they like that the director added a bit of levity to some scenes as punctuation, as a way of relieving tension. Surely you understand that. You’ve seen plenty of films.

JEM: Yep, and they all show up in Weapons. I’m sorry, but this thing vacillates between sloppy punctuation and run-on sentences. It’s the most undisciplined horror movie I’ve seen since…well, The Monkey.

Take Josh Brolin’s character, a grieving dad whose son has been missing for a month. In one  scene, he wakes up in his child’s bed after a bizarre nightmare full of symbolism and ghoulish imagery. It should be enough to just let him sit and sweat and catch his breath. But after a beat he randomly cries out, “What the fuck?!”, in the first of about five such instances.

Rep: All those instances got huge laughs in our test screenings. Audiences love it.

JEM: Because they’ve been conditioned to laugh by directors who think horror is corny, who don’t believe in anything bigger than themselves. Everything supernatural is inherently stupid.

The first time we see Aunt Gladys [Amy Madigan], she’s a snarling, bug-eyed apparition with hastily painted red lips, cartoon orange hair, and a blue-and-white blouse. At one point, a junky character [Austin Abrams] sees her in the woods, eerily beckoning him. It’s literally a rip-off of Tim Curry from the It TV movie.

And because Cregger just can’t help himself, the junky makes a goofy scared face and darts off screen. I swear, the only bit of restraint in the whole film is that they didn’t add a puff of cartoon dust in his wake.

Rep: It’s really not my place to make this personal, but I found plenty of restraint in Weapons.

JEM: I must have missed it. Was there some in the police pat-down scene, where “Rule of Three” was practically written in All Caps across the screen? A cop [Alden Ehrenreich] gets ready to search the junky and asks, “If I reach in your pocket, is anything going to poke me?” No. “So I won’t find anything in your pocket that’s gonna poke me?” No. “Okay, because if I reach in there and I get poked…”

Cop reaches into junky’s pocket–immediately gets stuck by a dirty needle.

Rep: Another big laugh…

JEM: Hilarious. But not as good as the real punchline, when we remember that this cop had had sex with his ex-girlfriend in a previous scene–which, thanks to the cutesy, non-linear screenplay, actually takes place a few hours after this encounter. Meaning the cop knowingly slept with someone without first confirming he didn’t have AIDS. Lemme tell ya, I almost fell out of my seat laughing.

Rep: You’re the only person we’ve spoken with who takes all this so seriously.

JEM: That explains a lot.

Speaking of which, have you talked to any people after these screenings? Like, real people? Maybe those who’ve lost a loved one? I ask because there’s another scene where Brolin’s character asks a fellow grieving parent if he can see the home security footage from the night her daughter disappeared. She refuses. He relents.

Soon after, Brolin approaches the woman’s husband in their driveway after work and we cut to the family’s living room, where the guys are watching the footage while the wife fumes in the background. This sequence plays as a double-whammy of gags; first by revealing the husband to be Justin Long– 

Rep: Ah, yes! He was in Cregger’s last movie, Barbarian.

JEM: I know. As did the people around me who literally pointed at the screen and giggle-whispered, “That’s the guy from Barbarian!”

Rep: So, it was an effective reference. The problem is…?

JEM: [Sighs, ignores interjection] The second payoff is the beleaguered wife whose sadness and anger have been relegated to a joke that wouldn’t have made it onto Family Guy. It’s tasteless and sexist and isn’t this supposed to be a horror movie?!

Rep: What about Benedict Wong’s arc, morphing from friendly school principal into a bloodthirsty maniac? That’s been one of the highest-marked “horror moments” on our respondent surveys.

JEM: First, that’s not an “arc”. Falling victim to Voodoo mind-control doesn’t count as character growth. Second, that whole transformation was ruined by falling to the recent trend of characters repeatedly head-bashing other characters’ heads (or their own) into bloody pulps. Third, the bulging-eyes prosthetics on Wong looked like something out of the Toxic Avenger sequels. Just cheap beyond reason.

Rep: I’m curious: Do you even like genre films? You’re sounding more and more like that guy from Ratatouille. Can you tell me a horror movie that actually suits your tastes?

JEM: Sinister.

Rep: Hmm?

JEM: Sinister. The movie Sinister, from 2012. Starred Ethan Hawke. Directed by Scott Derrickson. It also dealt with supernatural forces and the disappearance of children. Not a perfect movie, but one that respects the horror experience.

It was also about something. Hawke’s character was a famous writer on the downswing, who didn’t realize that a demon was preying on his desperation for renewed fame until it was too late. It was a chilling allegory about valuing success and “stuff” over family.

Rep: We’ve gotten a lot of feedback praising the themes in Weapons. After the 17 kids disappear from that classroom, the school shuts down for a month. Other parents demand that the school re-open so their kids can start learning again. That’s COVID, right there. And even a little “school shooting” drama if you think about it.

JEM: Neither have anything to do with the other, aside from a classroom setting. And if Cregger and co. had wanted to explore those real-world events through allegory, a rambling, unfocused comedy with horror trappings is not the way to go.

Okay, maybe it's a way to go, but he’s a lousy navigator.

Hell, this movie should’ve been the horror equivalent of Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, with Josh Brolin standing in for Hugh Jackman’s shell-shocked, vengeance-seeking father of a missing child.

Rep: Y’know what’s funny? Both Jackman and Brolin played Marvel characters.

JEM: Really? That’s what you took from my–?

Nevermind [Checks phone]. My ride’s almost here.

Rep: Did you at least like the ending? Where all the kids chase the witch through town and rip her to pieces on that front lawn?

JEM: I’ll answer with an anecdote. A few weeks ago I was invited to attend a critics’ screening of the new Avatar trailer. Not the movie. The trailer. For a solid forty-five minutes, we all sat in a state-of-the-art Dolby theatre and watched the same two-minute teaser on repeat.

It’s a terrible trailer, which fails to distinguish Avatar 3 from Avatar 2 or Avatar 1 (or Ferngully or Aliens, for that matter). Even after the first five times, the crowd was in a pretty good mood–snickering, cracking light jokes, etc.

A half-hour in, the trailer cycle stopped, and cheers erupted for the silent black screen. Ten seconds later, the trailer began again, to unanimous groans and jokes (which, by now, had become far more mean-spirited). It was like the Ludovico Technique from A Clockwork Orange, but with nine-foot-tall Smurfs and no sex.

I hated myself for agreeing to show up. I hated the publicity team that organized the event on behalf of a studio I also hated for indulging the whims of a once-great storyteller–now reduced to peddling cliches and shiny-object filmmaking to general audiences who don’t seem to know that they can (and should) demand better. The whole scene was sad, unserious, and deeply dispiriting.

Rep: Why didn’t you just walk out after the first few minutes?

JEM: That’s surprisingly sound advice, thanks. Gotta run!

A recent L.A. transplant from the Midwest, award-winning film journalist John Erik Mann has written extensively for FilmArts (Kankakee Entertainment), Hobart Online Arts Xpress, and the South Chicago Arts Mailer. He loves tabby cats, model trains, and writing fake interview-style movie reviews like the one you’ve just read.