I can't tell you too much about Weapons, Zach Cregger's electric follow-up to the surprise horror hit Barbarian. But I can say that it's a movie about a classroom full of children who all disappear. And it's called Weapons. What does that bring to mind?
School shootings, yes, and that might be part of what Cregger is ultimately getting at. It's plausible, I suppose, with some creative interpretation. But it's certainly not a foregone conclusion. I can think of other possible interpretations—involving COVID-19, perhaps, or the unseemly use of children as political props in adult grievances, or the general failure of adult authority figures to protect and shield kids from the horrors of a world full of madness and evil. But it isn't obviously about any of these things. It's a movie that refuses to be straightforwardly interpreted in some headline-ready format. Thank goodness.
Weapons isn't what critics sometimes call a "potent metaphor," which usually means an "obvious metaphor." There's no signposting, no speechifying, no theme-is-stated moment that tells you what it all means. There's just a sequence of strange and terrifying events, maddeningly difficult to explain until you've seen the film through to the very end, and even then it remains hauntingly impenetrable. Unlike so many of today's supposedly elevated horror films, there's no one clear concept connecting all the dots to some modern social problem. I can tell you what happens in Weapons, but not precisely what it's supposed to mean.
