The comedy-to-horror pipeline is real. It might seem counterintuitive at first, but comedy is in fact the most difficult of all genres to do well. Getting a laugh is much harder than just putting on a funny hat and mugging for the camera. As Conan O’Brien says, you have to find the balance point between smart and stupid. You need a high degree of emotional intelligence to figure out the line between funny and mean.
The most important skill a comedian can have is good timing. You have to know when to hit them with the punch line and when to milk a moment for maximum impact. It turns out, that’s one of the most important skills for a horror director as well.
The most prominent example of the comedy-to-horror pipeline is Jordan Peele. His Comedy Central series Key & Peele is a milestone of millennial humor, but after that show ended in 2015, Peele branched out into horror with the all-time classic Get Out, which was No. 8 on The New York Times’ 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century list.
The latest rider on the pipeline is Zach Cregger, who was a founding member of The Whitest Kids U’Know comedy troupe. After a sitcom career that spanned the ’10s, he branched out with the horror film Barbarian in 2022. I liked that film okay, but I loved his latest, Weapons.
Barbarian is a terrifying take on gentrification and its discontents. Weapons is a meditation on grief, at least partially inspired by the untimely death of his Whitest Kids co-founder Trevor Moore. The story is framed as an urban legend. It begins with a child’s voice (Scarlett Sher) explaining that the story is true, but you haven’t heard about it because the powers that be covered it up. But, the voice assures us, a lot of people die in really weird ways. This is what we call “setting reasonable expectations.”
The film is set in exurban Pennsylvania, where one morning, 17 third graders don’t show up for class. Their teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) arrives to a classroom empty except for Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), a shy kid who was relentlessly bullied by his classmates. The police immediately get involved, but they quickly run out of clues. When the distraught parents check their doorbell cameras, all they see is their children walking calmly out their front doors at the same time — 2:17 a.m. — and disappearing into the night.
Suspicion falls on Justine. In a highly emotional town hall meeting, Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), the father of one of the missing children, confronts Justine. What went on in her classroom before the disappearances? What does she know?
Justine insists that she knows nothing but is wracked with guilt just the same. Police Chief Ed Locke (Toby Huss) grilled her for a month and decided she is innocent, but Archer is unconvinced. He pressures Principal Miller (Benedict Wong) into putting Justine on a leave of absence. But sitting alone at home with her vodka and sodas is the worst thing that could happen to Justine. She demands to see Alex, but the cops and Principal Miller nix that idea, so she takes the investigation into her own hands. And by that I mean, she stalks the child, following him back to his perfectly normal looking home, where she discovers that the windows have been covered with newspaper, and the lights never come on. Meanwhile, she drunkenly hooks up with her ex Paul (Alden Ehrenreich). Since he is a) a cop; b) married to Donna (June Diane Raphael), the daughter of the police chief; and c) in recovery for alcoholism, this turns out to be a very bad idea.
Part of the brilliance of Weapons is its Rashomon-like construction. The story is told from the points of view of Justine, Archer, Paul, a homeless meth head named James (Austin Abrams), Principal Miller, and, finally, Alex. Cregger leads us down each story path in turn, revealing much about how his characters’ inner lives and responses to trauma inform their actions while also dropping details which slowly reveal the bigger picture. It certainly helps that Cregger has some primo acting talent to sell his story. Brolin is nearly unrecognizable as the frantic father whose grief drives him to extreme measures. Garner is dynamite as a train wreck of a person who is probably holding up better than I would under the circumstances. Nine-year-old Cary Christopher is poised beyond his years. His scenes with Amy Madigan, who plays his Aunt Gladys, are exceptionally creepy.
I wouldn’t call Weapons a horror-comedy, per se, but it got more laughs than any horror film I have seen since Jordan Peele’s Us. Cregger is an instinctive crowd-pleaser, and while Weapons definitely has something to say about grief and the madness of crowds, it is above all an immensely satisfying night at the movies.
Weapons
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