‘Weapons’ spins small town into chaos that mirrors real life, humor and all

LOS ANGELES -- If there’s one thing Zach Cregger learned while writing and directing his upcoming horror movie “Weapons,” it’s that the best laughs won’t come from the jokes he writes.

The film follows Cregger’s 2022 solo directorial debut “Barbarians,” the widely celebrated genre-bending horror. This time, the young director bends even more, spinning a town into chaos when all children but one from the same classroom mysteriously vanish, leaving a trail of questions in their place.

The Warner Bros. release hits theaters Friday and is as creepy as it is hilarious — a delicate balance that required Cregger to strip any intentionality behind his humor, he told The Associated Press.

“If the humor is coming from an authentic reaction that a character’s having, then it works,” Cregger said. “There’s a lot of jokes that didn’t make it into the movie that I thought were going to be so funny. And then we did a test screening, and nobody laughed and I’m like, OK, it’s gotta go.”

Paranoia runs deep in the film. The town's heartbroken parents are represented by Josh Brolin’s character, Archer, whose son was among the missing. The students’ teacher, played by Julia Garner, is determined to solve the mystery, despite parents blaming her for the disappearances.

The humor here comes naturally, Cregger said, as characters navigate the absurd events happening around them.

“You’re not playing for the laugh, otherwise you lose the laugh,” said Brolin, whose character stumbles through his grief, a state ripe for what he called genuine and “embarrassingly funny” moments.

If 17 kids up and ran out of their homes at 2:17 a.m. one morning with no trace, what would a community do? That question drove “Weapons,” painting a picture of a town left reeling by the mystery.

The film setting — the fictional small town of Maybrook, Illinois — is just as integral to the plot as any of its main characters. The town feels hyper realistic, a core tenet to the movie’s ability to blend humor and horror, two genres that Garner said are “opposite side of the same coin.”

“It’s funny because this isn’t even like a proper horror film,” Garner said. “It has comedic elements and has horror elements, but it’s kind of its own genre, in a way.”

The town’s reactions to tragedy and shock was intentionally meant to feel oddly realistic, Cregger said. Parents are outraged, storming into town halls and angrily demanding answers from the police, the school and, most pointedly, the students’ teacher. Yet, when Garner’s character is attacked in broad daylight, bystanders and store owners hardly bat an eye, a level of indifference that Cregger said is just as realistic as the parental outrage.

“We definitely have a, ‘Whoa, not my problem,’ kind of a thing when chaos is occurring, because we see it so much on TV that I think we’re able to just kind of tune it out, even when it’s happening in front of us,” Cregger said. “Living in America, I’ve seen crazy things happen with my own eyes right in front of me, and I’ve just kept walking for better or worse, so I don’t know, it feels real.”

Brolin — who's found wide-reaching success across Hollywood, from the 1985 classic, “The Goonies,” to the Marvel universe — initially hesitated when approached for the film. As a father of four, facing his worst nightmare — losing his children — was “not something I want to show up to work for,” he said.

But “Weapons” lends the characters a layer of depth that allowed horror, a genre he said is typically treated as cosmetic, to suddenly have “depth, and humor and absurdity,” which, coupled with his own adult daughter’s love of “Barbarian,” was enough to convince him to sign on.

The movie subtly mocks suburban life, as goriness and horror occur under the sights of nosy neighbors, corrupt police departments and struggling relationships.

Each character that drives the plot forward is just as flawed as they are victims of tragedy. Gandy, the schoolteacher, is harassed by parents for her missing students, but is secretly battling alcoholism. Archer, the heartbroken father, is failing in his job and his marriage as he navigates his son’s absence. Paul Morgan, played by Alden Ehrenreich, is a local beat police officer with secrets of his own.

“Every character is perceived in a certain way and then every character breaks,” Brolin said. “It all comes down to this very base thing: What if you lost the thing that you value the most? How do you deal?”

For Ehrenreich, who’s found success in dramas, notably as a young Han Solo, “Weapons” offered a different pace, but its horror wasn’t what drew him in. Rather, he was captivated by the film’s depth and weirdness.

“The weird resonance, the weird opening voice-over, the way it was written and the kind of emotional brokenness of these characters and the depth that I felt was in the writing, that was as deep as any drama I’ve read in years,” Ehrenreich said.