The New Movie 'Weapons' Is All About the Dark-Suburbia Aesthetic

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Weapons is not a very scary horror film. It is, however, a fascinating movie about the suburbs and the way the architecture of family life supports silence and complicity. Horror movies often utilize the suburbs to interrogate the seedy underbelly of American promise. Whether exploring fear, ennui, racial tensions, or Satanic Panic, suburban horror films are about control—who has power and who desperately wants it. Weapons is Zach Cregger's sophomore feature, and it considers similar thematics to his first. If Barbarian was about gentrification and white flight, Weapons is about the fall-out of isolation, the way the suburban McMansion radiates dread. Weapons builds on a wave of recent creepy-past-inspired films like Longlegs, I Saw the TV Glow, and Talk to Me by considering how isolating the insulated, ostentatious Tuscan kitchen really is. Behind every manicured lawn is a secret, waiting for revelation.
It's best to go into Weapons without knowing too much, so be warned, as some spoilers lie ahead. The basic plot of the film is deceptively simple. Opening with a child's voiceover, we discover that 17 kids vanished at 2:17 a.m. in a suburban neighborhood. Everyone suspects their teacher, the troubled Ms. Gandy (Julia Garner). From there, the film begins to shift perspectives, zooming in and out on different key players like Archer (Josh Brolin), one of the missing kid's dads, who is in the process of building a McMansion. The parents and school officials are desperate for someone to blame. The first to be deposed are the town drug addict and the slutty, alcoholic Ms. Gandy. Someone even paints 'WITCH' on the promiscuous teacher's car. Cregger, a graduate of the comedy sketch show The Whitest Kids U' Know, often uses humor to underscore the escalating tension. 'I'm phobic!' One kid yells at a pivotal moment. Sometimes, these excited utterances undercut the horror. 'What the fuck' is a common refrain throughout the movie.
The image of a large, nearly empty house also recurs during Weapons. Of course, the economics of house ownership have been on a grim downward spiral. Since about 2008, suburban opulence has continued to feel more and more out of reach for younger generations. A recent book titled What Happened to Millennials? by Charlie Wells ties the emotional complications of that generation with its increasingly dismal economic options. Millennials have a lower home-ownership rate compared to Boomers or Gen X, and many claim they will be renting for the rest of their lives, according to Self. Their bank accounts are trapped under the shadow of 9/11 and the 2008 financial crash. Currently, millennials make up the largest renting population. Perhaps it makes sense that younger generations continue to glamorize a period in time when big, beautiful homes were the norm–even if those who grew up in them have a different story to tell. This frenzied panic—a lack of access to a stable future—may be reflected in nostalgia porn, the TikTok clips and architectural walk-throughs in praise of the McMansion that glamorize the hallowed halls of Tony Soprano's house. Few will ever achieve such architectural bliss.
Still, nostalgic envy for the McMansion may not be the sole motivator for such TikTok trends. It's true that the suburbs offer a seductive fairy tale, but younger generations know how fairy tales go. Rarely do they end well for everyone involved. Horror movies, like neighborhoods, often rely on the tropes of fairy tales. The illusion of safety is evasive. Suburbia needs us to believe that its fortified walls are safe, that your neighbor is your friend—the traditional American mythology. But younger generations know that gated communities have failed to keep the danger out there. The kids have seen violence both at home and abroad, from sexual abuse to school shootings. Films like Weapons remind us that evil is often more familiar than strange.
The concept of specific generations sometimes feels like astrology for policy wonks, but it does seem like Gen Z has a higher tolerance for irony and ambivalence. Its fascination with architectural trends may not be entirely sincere. While weathering a flood of memes, seven-second skits, and 9/11 jokes, younger generations may not see the need to distinguish between authenticity and artificiality. Certainly not in the same way Boomers desire clear, succinct definitions. Vibes are the new truth. The suburbs offer a vibe ripe for remixing, reinterpreting, and reinscribing.
In Weapons, amber light filters through the hallways and landings of large two-story homes, capturing a familiar aesthetic. The film recalls the terrifying late-night walk in the dark to the bathroom. Slightly askew camera angles frame long corridors like menacing tunnels. At night, the blue light of the TV is the only illumination for miles, and security cameras can capture only so much. In a Cregger film, the basement is a horrible chamber, meant as a kind of prison. Trauma, he suggests, makes weapons of us all. For most of the film, he teases us regarding what exactly the weapon of mass destruction will be. Cue a shot of an AK-47 glowing in the sky.
The real weapon, however, is the specter of child abuse. Ms. Gandy seems the easiest target for parents to accuse of being a predator. A groomer, the film silently implies. Then a more grim picture emerges. The call is coming from inside the house. A witch has hexed the small suburban town, threatening a child with the death of his parents. Unlike this summer's earlier horror blockbuster Bring Her Back, however, the kids in Weapons are ultimately able to escape the violent spell of their abuser. Their triumphant moment of liberation, crashing through the windows, fences, and lawns of giant homes, is one of the film's most cathartic moments. The silent complicity of the suburbs will not stand. In the daylight, what was once a neighborhood of sinister empty homes becomes a playground for destruction. The gleefully violent appetite of children's liberation ravages their palatial excess. Watching the glass shatter and fences fall feels not unlike apocalypse porn—the inverse of suburban envy. If you can't have it, you can at least enjoy watching it be demolished by children avenging their stolen youth. Fairy tales often end up this way: Ding dong, the witch is dead. Still, it takes a long time to achieve victory. In the suburbs, no one does anything when they hear you scream. They wait for someone else to deal with it.
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