No one really saw Barbarian coming, the playful 2022 horror about an Airbnb reservation gone horribly wrong. That was part of the plan, a teasing trailer that only told a small part of the story and a swaggering title that promised something grander than we could initially see, and that might be why I found the reaction to be a little alienating. It was showered with euphoric praise upon release and first-time writer-director Zach Cregger, whose background is in comedy, was immediately heralded as a new king of the genre. For me, it was more trick than treat, a sizzle reel that showed Cregger to be a film-maker of considerable skill but also one who papered over the cracks of an exasperatingly illogical and uninspired script with flashy gimmickry.
There’s been an inevitable shift in the hype machine for Cregger’s follow-up, the bigger, bolder and, thankfully, better Weapons, buzz that began when his spec script caused a talk-of-the-town auction months after Barbarian overperformed. Industry rumours suggested that Jordan Peele was so determined to land the project that when his company lost out to New Line, he parted ways with his management. There’s since been over two years of anticipation – Cregger comparing the project to Magnolia, stars such as Julia Garner and Josh Brolin signing up, an all-out assault of a marketing campaign – and so second time around, it’s virtually impossible not to see this one coming. Credit to the Warner Bros marketing team for still holding something back though, the jolting string of trailers highlighting enough of the standard WTF imagery without really revealing all that much beyond the striking premise.
