[This story contains spoilers for Weapons.]
Zach Creggers Weapons is the latest horror story in a year in which epic studio horror films with big casts and even larger ambitions thrive like sinnerPresent Final goal: blood lines And 28 years later. After the joke cash projection and the shipping of an enthusiastic audience with increased legumes and more than a few giggles (at least until all lights go out and only the nightmares stay), Weapons has dominated film -centered discussions on social media for days.
Creggers Twisty Tale has a unique wall carpet of crossing characters by Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, Austin Abrams and Cary Christopher, all of whom were caught in the mysterious disappearance of 17 children.
It is no surprise that the film has led to discussions about its deeper meaning. However, the most frustrating point among them is the argument of several critics and a wider collection of the audience that the film has no deeper meaning and is ultimately nothing. Rather, it is about the fact that the audience brings the film meaning into the film because years of so-called increased horror has trained it in order to expect importance at the surface level-and so to expect. It is an assertion that of course I not only find wrong, but also anti-analytical Weapons it is about something. It is about so many things it feels reductively.
It is both a blessing and a curse that we have so much access to the thoughts of artists through the Internet and social media. On the one hand, the intentions of an artist make it more difficult to abuse. On the other hand, we made complacent thinkers. Websites and Reddit-Thread's spoon-feed audience with headlines such as “What does the end of this film mean”, and if it is not that, his journalists write the complete summaries of the end of a film so that people can give their voice without seeing the film.
As a film culture, we have lost part of our curiosity to find homogeneous and simplified answers if in many cases simple answers have no priority for most filmmakers.
Cregger recently spoke to The Hollywood reporter About the foundation of WeaponsAnd he described it as an emotional reaction to the death of his best friend and tried to process this loss. Although Cregger has not named his friend in any of his interviews, those who are familiar with Cregger's work agree that he talks about Trevor Moore, the beloved comedian, musician and filmmaker, the founding member of the comedy troop The Whitest Kids U (WKUK), together with Cregger. Weapons was released on August 7, the fourth anniversary of Moore's death.
Apart from the consideration of the loss by the film, it is really and deliberately funny. There is a character-driven humor and pointed memories of the absurdity of life that feels like a successor to some of WKUK's sketch comedy moments.
Cregger continued to go back to his personal life and also revealed that the last chapter of the film with Alex (Christopher) and his parents was inspired by his father's alcoholism and his own. “The idea that this foreign unit will come to your home and change your parents, and you have to deal with this new behavior pattern that you do not understand and do not have the equipment with which you can handle” Th.. Through Cregger's lens, Weapons is partly about loss and alcoholism. He found out what it was all about during the writing process, while he still had no answers for everything, such as the giant AK-47, which hovers over the house of Archer Graff (Brolin).
Undeniable, Weapons it is about something. However, it is also important to emphasize that Cregger's objectively is not the final statement of the film and that other points of view does not negate.
There are this hurry, other readings of the film with general chorus such as “actually said Cregger, it is about being about” or “they read too much”. While Weapons is clearly personal for Cregger, it is not a private diary entry. It is public art, something that is given to the audience so that they can apply their own lens to it.
It is deeply silly to argue with people who say Weapons Is about gun violence and arms control, the child trade, the collapse of the communities and the warfare community leaders. How often do we consider art as one thing or only exist what the filmmaker says? If we did that, there would be much less about the works of Bob Dylan and David Lynch. We would have to agree with William Friedkin The exorcist Is not a horror film and refuses important discussions about AIDS because David Cronenberg said that this was not his intention. The intentionality is an interesting way to departure, but far less interesting when it comes to the art of the art of art.
Before I read interviews or theories WeaponsI sat with the film and wondered how I felt and what made me think about it. The most recurring pictures I produced were those of Hansel and Gretel and the bread crumbs that led to the Haus der Witch. Only in this case were the bread crumbs in vodka bottles, used syringes and cherry red paint left.
For me, Weapons is a shitty fairy tale that plays with fears of strangers, old people, wigs and loss, which then find a way to pull the classic horror archetype of the witch, Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan) in contemporary times to organize parents. Fears that fear for the Internet. And have so inexplicable that it feels close enough to witchcraft.
The central source of fear that I found in the dark basement of Weapons Was the question of who shapes our children and what they are shaped into? We have certainly seen the influence that people like Andrew Tate, Jordan Petersen and Ben Shapiro had on the poisoning of young heads and raise them on the principles of misogyny, racism, greed and self -interest. I would hesitate to call what you do less than weapon production to harm our society.
My Warmth vision Colleague Brian Davids and I discussed a slightly different view of what Weapons is approximately. He said, given the end of the film, Weapons It is about “the younger generation that the tables of the older generation tends to experience the effects of their trauma or trauma by maintaining harmful systems and laws.” Aunt Gladys essentially serves as a representative of this older generation and feeds on the boys to stay in power.
In the children's last defiance files, they tear Gladys Limb from Bloody Limb, who effectively end their reign of terror and frees themselves for what David's ultimately calls a generational film against generations.
In a way, Weapons Works as the opposite of LonglegWhat was worried, how parents often hide things from their children, only when these children were traumatized years later when they discover these hidden secrets, and later pass on this trauma to their children in an endless cycle. Weapons Seems to break such cycles, and no more devils hide in cellars or bedrooms on the upper floor that play with dolls or ligaments of the hair.
In an interview with The playlist Cregger said: “I have not tried to comment on collective social tragedies or even use the collective social tragedies. But for those who see America in America WeaponsLike me, like Brian Davids and countless others, they are not wrong.
Back there Th. Interview has dropped this nugget of the truth: “It is not really my business what people do from the film. I have nothing to say because the films should speak for themselves, and if I have to comment on what people should get from it, then I failed as a filmmaker.”
In me it seems to me that many of us are concerned about making films, loosening them in front of others and then being afraid, the “What was it really about?” Question about the judgment. But in the end I believe that this is a bad service for film analysis and for the films itself. We have made the idea of being right or wrong with films, and it is a boring state in which we can harm an educated analytical swing in good-hithing, because every work of art is about something, many things, and that is what art keeps life on life.