Pop Culture Happy Hour - Weapons

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

The intriguing and seriously creepy new film Weapons follows what happens after 17 third-graders get out of their beds on the same night, at the same time, and disappear. The community points fingers at the students’ teacher, played by Julia Garner. The latest film from Zach Cregger (Barbarian), Weapons explores why one student was spared that fateful night. There’s a clear answer – but we guarantee it’s not one you’ll see coming. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureTo access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Okay, well, the intriguing and seriously creepy new film, Weapons, is one of those movies that works best, the less you know beforehand. So we'll be careful here. It's by the guy behind the horror film Barbarian from a few years back. The film follows what happens after 17 children get out of their beds on the same night, at the same time, and disappear into the suburban night. The community is left asking why and pointing fingers. I'm Linda Holmes.

And I'm Glenn Weldon. We're talking about weapons. This is Popcorn. Helter Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is Jordan Cruciola. She's a writer and producer and the host of the podcast Feeling Scene on Maximum Fun. Welcome back, Jordan. Thank you so much for having me, especially here with two heavy hitters such as yourselves.

Well, let's do it. You can hit heavy yourself. Weapons is set in a suburb called Maybrook, where one night, at exactly 2.17 in the morning, 17 of the kids from the same third grade classroom run away from their homes in a very creepy way. And I mean that literally the way these kids run is creepy. The community is quick to blame the class's teacher Ms. Gandy, played by Julia Garner. Josh Brolin plays Archer, one of the parents of the missing kids, who's sure Ms. Gandy knows more than she's telling. And then there's Alex.

The only kid from Ms. Gandy's class who didn't go missing that night. He's played by Carrie Christopher. Why was he spared? Well, there is a clear answer, but I guarantee it's not the one you're going to see coming. Weapons was written and directed by Z. Zach Greger, whose previous film Barbarian, threaded the same creepy, funny needle this one does. Weapons is in theaters now. Linda, we've been hearing your grunts of assent.

What do you think? Yeah, I thought this was great. I enjoyed this a lot. I walked out of it and I said, that was really good and very upsetting. It is sort of viscerally an upsetting movie, but I found it to be one that earns that feeling, especially because I think the performances are so good. I think they're using really sturdy actors here, Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Aaron Reich, etc. And I think visually the inventiveness of this film, I mean, this is a movie that has some of those shots where you just find yourself thinking like, oh, that's nicely done, you know? And that includes, you know, listen, there is some jump scare stuff in this movie, for sure.

The guy that was sitting next to me at one point, he sort of jumped scared outward and like just pressed his honest. into my side for about two seconds. He needed you there. And then he goes, my bad. And I said, no, no, I get it. Perfect horror fan. And then we went back to enjoying it in peace together, occasionally muttering as you do this. When somebody's going to do something and you're going, I loved this.

I had a great time. I think it's exceptionally directed. There's a chase late in the movie that is one of the scariest. creepiest and funniest chases that I've seen in a long time. Loved it. Had a great, amazing time. Yeah, I mean, some of those images you mentioned, I mean, like there's a scene where we get these shots of the kids running.

And they're so layered those shots because they're literally, like, some of the kids are in the foreground, some of the kids are in the background. Yeah. And the landscape they're running over has these little hills and valleys, like lawns and driveways and culverts, and we're going with them. So we see them kind of going up and down. That is imagery that just locks in place in your head. I'm going to have it for the rest of my life.

And I'm grateful for it. Jordan. What did you think? Huge fan. I had a lot of fun with Barbarian. I think it's a better concept than it is a movie. Oh, sure. Not to say, like, it's fun. It deserve to be a hit. It really comes out swinging. Everybody's giving it they're all. Zach Krieger has tapped into performers who really want to meet him where he is in terms of his movies. This is a better movie. And it's so exciting. And I felt the same thing going from Smile 1, which is an incredibly scary, like jump, skiske. Gary you two death movie and then Smile 2 is a better movie. And it's like, wow, Parker Finn didn't just have one good idea that he cashed in on. Like he's coming back and he grew as a filmmaker in a horror franchise.

And with horror as well, I feel like if you do good, like kind of one time, people will ride for you. So it's super exciting to see somebody who came off of a movie that was like, hey, kapow, huge twist. that really threw people for a loop and then come to this movie unfold it so differently. And also ride on a marketing campaign that is so effective from the trailer and yet still does not tip off its hand at all. I was amped from the trailer and then came into this. And throughout the movie was checking myself being like, dang, the trailer gave me no indication of how this is going right now. And so that was super exciting to feel like I got like a full meal from the trailer. but that it did not betray the five courses that were going to come before me.

Super excited. I remember seeing this trailer the first time and I just was like that looks super scary and I'm going. Uh-huh. Yeah, totally. Oh, yes, and not knowing exactly what you're going to get makes this all the better. What really struck me is the confidence of this filmmaker. Totally. This movie, right from the jump, raises this incredibly intriguing questions and isn't just content to just raise the question.

It loads it with all of this, what we talked about, this kind of aesthetic quality and symbolic weight. And we got to shout out the director of photography, Larkin Seiple, who he makes the suburbs at night look as scary as they are. This is it. Beautiful, mysterious, but also ugly and depressing. All at once. All at the same time. And also a lot of incredible POV work, I think, in the way that they, because the way that the film is structured is you kind of have different sections that are sort of focused on different characters. And there's a lot of use of both over the shoulder shots, which are a pretty standard way to do POV stuff, but also especially at the beginning with Ms. Gandy, Justine,

you see a lot of shots of kind of parts of her body. She's cut off in different ways. You're only kind of gradually introduced to her as a full body figure. You know what I mean? And I think all of that's very intentional. They have a great feel for both the jump scare that happens because the thing just appeared and the jump scare that happens because the thing just came into frame, which are slightly different things. And there also are a few embedded. You think there's going to be a jump scare and there's not. And that's very important. You've got to do the intermittent stuff so that everybody doesn't know exactly what's happening. Yeah, of course. Because like we do get a snippet from a kid's point of view and that is shot at like from a three foot high perspective. So we're kind of siren songed at the beginning into this big, huge, intriguing mystery. And then the film kind of goes, you know what? We'll get to it. And then spends the bulk of the film building out the world of this town from all these various viewpoints. We see the same scenes from different characters' eyes because he knows that when the payoff comes, he's going to land this plane.

And that's if you learn nothing from this listeners who haven't seen this movie yet, know that this is delayed gratification, the movie. The frustration I was feeling. I was feeling like there were like, oh boy, you better deliver for me, man. This is it. And you better have a plan for all these pieces that you've dropped in all these different stories. Right. We get to the fireworks factory at its glorious. So what you're feeling is technically it's impatience. This film made me impatient. But the film was completely in control of that. And again, I could talk about this forever. This film gets the suburbs at night in a way that is not this Spielberg, kids on bikes suburbs at night. It's way darker, actually, than the stranger things suburbs at night. This is, I saw the TV glow suburbs at night. This is sinister. There is a malevolence here. And these kids, we mentioned it, but these kids run.

in an unnatural way. Yeah. That the first time I saw it, I thought, okay, I get what you're doing. You're doing this wildly impractical running that they do in anime like Naruto and attack on Titan, where you just lean forward and you throw your arms behind you, which just, it looks cool, but if you trip goodbye to your teeth, right? That's what I thought they were doing. But it's different.

It is a full-on run with the torso very rigid and straight up and the arms held out to the side. And the vibe I was getting from that was that terror of war photo from the Vietnam War, from the Vietnam War where the nine-year-old girl just fleeing the napalm attack. That's what I think is happening there. And this is such a great-looking film despite this setting, which, again, is a squalid urban sprawl strip mall suburbs. I mean, the beauty of the strip mall liquor store, right? The shot where we followed Julie Garner in to the liquor store,

and we watch her turn to the aisles to the vodka section. Knowing exactly where she's going. It's left, right, left again. And what that sets up for that same journey eventually in the movie, dear God. Absolutely. We know at that point, we know so much about her character.

We know she's not browsing. She's hunting. And her quarry is vodka. She has an appointment with that specific shelf in that specific spot. They know each other very well. They go way back.

What did you guys make of the film's fractured approach, though? I mean, would this film be different if it was told in a more straightforward way? Do you have a sense of what's gained and what's lost there? I thought it worked really, really well. What I love about this is that it feels

completely original. and when you see somebody come out with a hit like Barbarian, and rather than doing something that feels like it's just next, you get something that feels really lively and interesting to me. And I think the structure, although it's not, the entire reason for that, is one of the reasons for that. You mentioned Glenn, there's a confidence to structuring the movie this way because there is a whole series of little pieces that are laid down

that are critical to understand. everything about the story you eventually are getting. But they feel at the time like, well, this feels important, but I'm not sure what it's going to turn out to be about. And there are some reveals that are withheld so long that you start to think, like, is there something to this? Are we jumping past this? But at the same time, you have a movie with enough just, like, exciting, scary, fun moments that, like, I actually turn to the guy next next. me at one point and kind of muttered, see, I don't like eyeball stuff. Yeah. Same. And he said, it wasn't eyeball stuff.

So it's also that kind of movie. And I absolutely, by the way, I think, go see it in a theater. Gosh, please go see it in a theater. Definitely. I was so glad I was seeing it in a theater with a crowd, with a guy next to me, who I could tell that I don't like eyeballs stuff. So that's what I would say. The thing that I'm excited so much about this, like, double delivery from Zach Craig and like we mentioned, Parker Finn, is there was a school of horror film director that arose out of the art house merging with mainstream success, horror bubble that happened at the end of the 2010s

where, you know, kind of became the meme of elevated horror and trauma, trauma, trauma. There's that super cut of Jamie Lee Curtis when the new Halloween iteration came out that's just her saying, trauma, trauma, trauma, it's trauma, like over and over again. Trauma, specifically. But what I like about, like,

the smile thing and barbarian slash weapons is these movies are just good old scary movies. Sure, there's a lot going on. We can talk about the trauma of the town. But like, these are original movies and they're super scary and they look great and they kind of feel like the next maturation of these really like formally and artistically ambitious horror directors that are like fully merged with a studio system that now knows how to platform, really artistic horror in a way that perhaps it wasn't necessarily looking for to do in a way before that late 2010's bubble. And now we're getting some really great popcorn horror directors coming out of that that aren't necessarily just adapting Stephen King. And that is so exciting. And I think Julia

Garner in this lead role is such a perfect representation of that because she's kind of an oddity sort of a figure. Like, I find her destabilizing. I never know what she's going to do next. Like that clip of her from the show Ozark where she just screams, you're going to have to kill me. And there's something about the way she screams it where it just keeps going for an impossibly long time. You're like, wow, that's an actor's choice. Yeah. I thought she was by far the best thing about Ozark and the best thing about Wolfman, the one they made with Christopher Abbott, which I didn't think was that good. But she was good in it. She was such a perfect vehicle for being a woman in distress who's being put upon by this community, but who's also kind of an unlikable jerk

sometimes. She's like kind of a dirt bag. And she can straddle the tonalities of that character so well. She's such a perfect vehicle for this like scary, dark movie that is also hilarious intentionally. That without being a horror comedy. Julie Garner is definitely in her horror era because as we see shots of her in this movie poking around a dark house, I was thinking, no, you did that in Wolfman, but you've got so much more to do here. I loved how she's not permitted to just be this kind of angelic elementary school teacher. She's not just constantly wiping a tear at the thought of the children. She can be simultaneously a concerned teacher, but also a narcissistic one and one who makes bad choices. And, you know, shout out to the kid, Carrie Christopher as Alex. The second half of this film is resting on. on those tiny little shoulders and he bears it up. We can just say there's another actor in this film

who you won't see in the trailer because they factor into the why of it all in a big way. Just going to say here, they nail it. They're great. No notes. But Jordan, about that horror comedy thing,

you're our horror expert. I wouldn't sell this movie to listeners as a horror comedy. Like I wouldn't call Barbarian a horror comedy. This is just a hard movie with some very funny bits. You know, Justin Long turns up very briefly. And if they get a Spike Denzel relationship,

I'd love it. I would not complain if Justin Long keeps turning up in this guy's film. But in your head, do you have films that you think of as horror comedies and others that are horror with funny bits? Is there a useful distinction there at all? I think there is a useful distinction. And this is actually something I've only in the past couple days started really thinking about because Scott Mendelsohn actually posted something on Twitter I thought was really compelling, which was comedy has started to be cannibalized by other genres where like not all, but like so much horror is comedy now. Drama is comedy now. Romantic comedy has had this happen specifically. Exactly. And so like the playful and I think productive genre hybridization that started happening with like the occurrence of peak TV, I think what has come out of that and very much led by the Blumhouse model, which began as more of a straightforward horror factory, but then kind of adopted this thing of like, we're going for an 80-20 mentality. I want to be like 80% scarce, but I want to be 20% funny. And then it has kind of surged into the DNA of what I think,

a Blumhouse movie is that really coalesced, I think, in Megan at its most potent form, where, like, that is a horror comedy straight up, but it was still spooky. And to the point where it metastasized so much, I think, within the DNA of that studio that you put out Megan, too, and it's an action comedy. So comedy is actually becoming like a throughline DNA of what Blumhouse puts out almost as much as sometimes superseding the horror of it. But I think what I loved so much about how funny this movie was, is that this movie does not market how funny some of the bits are within it at all.

And that you do not show up and think, this isn't what I bought. You don't feel lied to by a trailer. How often do people feel lied to by a trailer because people don't know how to market the most effective part of the movie and get it to the fans who are going to want it? This marketing campaign knew its audiences and it knew that the tonal balance within the movie was going to make so much sense. It trusted the movie to be the movie. So people showing up and really laughing to break those valves of tension.

It doesn't feel like a horror comedy. It feels like a horror movie that it's doing an expert job calibrating those tension valves, which is what the genre is built on, is build up and release of tension. And comedy is a way in with that. And it just creates a wonderful balance in a movie like this. And I felt like the trailer absolutely gave me the right sense of what the movie was going to feel like. With the exception of what you're talking about, it doesn't market the comedy. But it gave me an accurate sense of the movie, but gave me an accurate sense of the movie,

but gave me no sense of what was going to happen. Totally. And that's a really difficult balance. And as the movie was going on, I was like, I have no idea whether they're ever going to care in this movie what happened to cause these kids to disappear or whether this is entirely a story like the leftovers is as a book. Sure. They don't ever explain it. It just happened. And then it's about aftermath, right?

And I felt like going in, I wasn't sure, is this entirely an aftermath movie or is there ever going. going to be an actual story of what's going on. The obvious reference in some ways is school shootings, right? You have a classroom full of kids who are all gone whose parents are grieving for them. There is one kind of overt nod to that idea that I found very interesting because it's just asserted. And then they don't like spend the rest of the movie talking about it, which I thought was really interesting. And that's one of those things that I kind of went back and I was like, huh. And I thought about it. Like, they are referencing this, but obviously he's confident enough that he doesn't

have to go back and make it a whole conversation about that with a whole set of very, like, elbow, elbow. Do you see the parallel I'm drawing? Sure. You know what I mean? I think other movies have taken this kind of approach of like, terrible thing happens in town. And like the town is shuttered. And like there is this sort of mass reaction to what has happened across the whole town, whereas the way this happened in its isolated pockets. And generally, these people are kind of wandering in a place where not necessarily everyone around them is going to react to them according to the tragedy that they're mired in did feel very real to the experience of how things happen in life and silos and boxes of like social media algorithms and the way

that people can be cut off from what seems like a monolithically big event and be like oh no I hadn't heard about that and surely everybody in this town knows about but I liked the very like contained explosion aspect of not everybody in this town is out searching for these kids Like it is on these people having this crushingly awful experience with no reprieve of a common community to tap into to help them. They are simply alone. And nobody is sure, I think, when to treat this as something that has happened and is over. Yeah. As opposed to something that is still happening and being resolved because there's an idea of like at what point do you just look and say this happened, I will never understand it, which I think is.

is a very natural question to ask yourself. And all of this isolation, like I said, it recalls school shootings in a way, it recalls post-pandemic in a way, or post-lockdown part of the pandemic. Because everybody is so isolated and distrustful and traumatized and not entirely able to articulate that,

I don't know. As you can tell, I just thought this was great. I enjoyed it so much. Gosh, I thought it was great. Well, that's it. You heard us. We all kind of loved it. And now we want to know what you think

about weapons. If you're still on Facebook, you can tell us there. You can do it on letterboxed, or you can leave a note in the whole of an old U-Tree at midnight under a half moon and we'll somehow get it. That brings us to the end of our show. Jordan Cruciola, Linda Holmes, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. Love it. Thank you, Glenn. And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio.

And you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free, so please go find out more at plus.npr.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by, Carly Rubin, Janaye Morris, and Mike Katzv, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy, and Hello, Come In, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we will see you all next time.