Horror’s in a tricky spot right now. It’s one of the last surviving genres where original material can still thrive, yet only when there’s a sense that what we’re being sold isn’t just a film, but a sensation – an invitation into a truly unmissable cultural moment. It wasn’t enough that Longlegs had Nicolas Cage falsetto singing in wild plastic surgery makeup. That 2024 film, we were repeatedly warned, was evil down to its atomic structure, as if it were a bit of satanic coding penned by the Zodiac Killer himself.
Weapons, which centres on the eerie disappearance of a class of schoolchildren, has similarly tried to latch onto the feel and aesthetics of true crime, focused on the conflicting testimonies of a grieving parent (Josh Brolin’s Archer) and the class’s teacher Justine (Julia Garner). It’s a wildly effective ad campaign. Yet I can’t help but think audiences are being slightly misled here. Zach Cregger’s follow-up to the monstrous Airbnb hijinks of 2022’s Barbarian is easily as weird, wicked, and fun – what it’s not, however, is the chilly, nightmare headf**k we’ve been told it is.
