Understandably, questions are raised both within the audience and the town where grieving parents seeks to place the blame somewhere. And it is certainly an open question over what Justine knows about the kids in her class. But as the title cruelly teases, there are sinister implications for what is going on right here. Flashing insert shots of young hands wrapping around a screaming adult’s face, or of young bodies running like ghouls in the night around a house, all elicit a familiar primal terror: what if the kids are, in fact, not all right?
We obviously, and delightedly, do not have the answer in this particular instance, but our curiosity is piqued. That’s the sign of a good teaser and hook. Otherwise all we know for certain is that Cregger has described this one as “a horror epic.” He also is working with an elemental fear that those we naturally and biologically view as our future, our species’ closest stab at immortality—the truly innocent—could also be turned against us. The weapons of our destruction.
That is sick and twisted stuff, and perhaps apropos of the filmmaker who revealed the secrets inside the AirBnB from hell in Barbarian. Hopefully, there are similar surprises and unexpected swerves awaiting Justine’s search for the truth. Weapons also stars Josh Brolin, Benedict Wong, and the forever welcome Alden Ehrenreich.
Weapons opens in theaters on Aug. 8.
