Zach Cregger’s follow-up to Barbarian is the new hit film Weapons. While there are many hot takes that make no sense for the film, one really bothered me. And it was people saying that it wasn’t a movie about anything.
On social media, I saw a sea of responses saying that Weapons ended up not being about anything and that’s the opposite of the truth. Part of the plot of the film is centered around the parents of the missing children trying to find their kids and their determination to bring them back. It is an exploration of grief and how all consuming it can be and Cregger did say that it was how he coped with the death of someone close to him.
While speaking with Variety about the movie, Cregger explained further how just because he used Weapons to explore his own grief, doesn’t mean that he’s better now that the movie is coming out. And his response is pretty much why I loved the film as much as I did.
“No. I mean, it doesn’t work that way. Somebody dies, and you’re gonna feel that absence for the rest of your life. Maybe the sting can kind of lessen, but I don’t know if that’s time or community or what. I don’t think making this movie has exorcised any demons,” Cregger told the outlet. “It’s just given me an opportunity to engage with those feelings in a healthy, constructive way. Rather than going and drinking myself to death, I’m able to write a character that drinks herself into a problem. I can take my anger and have Josh Brolin freak out, and that’s better than me freaking out.”
Grief is never-ending
I tend to look to stories about grief when my own grief feels isolating and overwhelming. When you lose someone, you find ways to cope. My father died and I love to make dead dad jokes but I think about him daily and miss him and movies like Weapons helps me understand that my own grieving process isn’t an isolated thing because so many of us go through it.
Characters like Josh Brolin’s Archer can be looked to as a source of comfort because he just wants answers and he will do anything to see his son again. While I would do anything to see my dad again, I know that it isn’t possible but movies like Weapons allows us to forget the reality of our own situations to have those cathartic moments with the characters instead.
Horror is often a way to explore emotions that people have labeled as “taboo.” We put a time limit on grief, telling people that you can’t grieve for someone you lost for more than x amount of time. But that’s just not the reality of the world we live in and I love that I can turn to movies like Weapons and see that others have to find creative ways to express their own grief and it, in turn, makes me feel less alone.
So if someone tries to tell you that Weapons was about nothing, they do not know what they are talking about.
(featured image: Warner Bros.)
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