Latest / The Kulturecast / Weapons (2025) — "This is a true story. It happened right here in my town two years ago."

Transcript

Weapons (2025) — "This is a true story. It happened right here in my town two years ago." · The Kulturecast

0:45
Speaker 1: This is a true story. One night, seventeen kids walked
0:51
Speaker 1: outside and they never came back. That's where are you.
1:01
Speaker 1: A lot of people dying this story, a lot of
1:05
Speaker 1: really weird place. This is where the story really starts.
1:12
Speaker 2: Weapons ready, dar, Hello everyone, and welcome to the Culture Cast.
1:15
Speaker 2: I am your host, Chris Tashu, And yes, this is
1:18
Speaker 2: another solo episode, just me here talking about movies, or
1:22
Speaker 2: at least a movie more specifically. On this episode, I'll
1:26
Speaker 2: be talking about one movie that's kind of been resonating
1:28
Speaker 2: with me more recently in positive and negative ways. But
1:34
Speaker 2: I wanted to talk about something first to lead into
1:37
Speaker 2: that that's a little bit more kind of broadly, and
1:42
Speaker 2: then we can talk about it a little bit more
1:44
Speaker 2: specifically about this movie, which I think is indicative of
1:48
Speaker 2: things recently, so in the last couple of years, and
1:53
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's been a while since this has
1:56
Speaker 2: been the case. It's been I guess probably twenty fourteen
2:00
Speaker 2: was something like It follows, and you know, even something
2:03
Speaker 2: like The Witch, which came out a year later. We
2:05
Speaker 2: have what is being called and you know, which I
2:07
Speaker 2: think a lot of people myself included talk about with
2:10
Speaker 2: elevated horror or horror being used to mean something, and
2:16
Speaker 2: you know, again, we as fans of horror. If you're
2:19
Speaker 2: listening to this show, I'm assuming you're a fan of horror,
2:22
Speaker 2: and if you're not, I understand why you might not be.
2:25
Speaker 2: But I actually think that these movies, for as much
2:27
Speaker 2: as I have an issue with them from time to
2:29
Speaker 2: time as kind of being a little uh, what's the
2:32
Speaker 2: term unsubtle some of these have, They're about as subtle
2:37
Speaker 2: as a jackhammer to the fucking forehead. Some of these movies.
2:41
Speaker 2: I mean again, you know, something like the Babaduke, which
2:44
Speaker 2: I'm not personally a fan of. I know that there
2:46
Speaker 2: are plenty of people, especially I'm sure people that are
2:49
Speaker 2: listening to this that are screaming into their headphones, going
2:52
Speaker 2: the Baba Duke is a great movie, Chris, you just
2:54
Speaker 2: don't understand and it's just not for me. I know
2:57
Speaker 2: that it's a good movie. It's just not for me.
2:59
Speaker 2: It's not something that I personally resonate with. But I
3:01
Speaker 2: can also understand why other people might resonate with it.
3:04
Speaker 2: I don't have kids, I don't have any aspirations to
3:07
Speaker 2: have kids, and so I think maybe the Bobaduk would
3:10
Speaker 2: resonate with me more if I were a parent, and
3:12
Speaker 2: especially if I were a parent of a special needs child,
3:17
Speaker 2: because I think the Bobbaduk, at least if memory serves
3:19
Speaker 2: that was kind of the main point of that movie,
3:22
Speaker 2: is that the kid in that movie is or at
3:25
Speaker 2: least coded as special needs. Again, I've only seen that
3:27
Speaker 2: movie once. It's not something I really wanted to revisit.
3:30
Speaker 2: And I think that that's the other thing about these
3:32
Speaker 2: these movies that are horror as X or you know,
3:35
Speaker 2: processing grief through the use of horror, or alcoholism or
3:39
Speaker 2: in something like It Follows, you know STDs, you know,
3:42
Speaker 2: sexually transmitted infections, I guess is probably what they're called now,
3:45
Speaker 2: you know, using using horror movies as a vehicle for
3:50
Speaker 2: those things is interesting. And I am a huge fan
3:55
Speaker 2: of processing emotions and externally utilizing art to process emotions
4:02
Speaker 2: in a healthy and cathartic way. And you know, in
4:05
Speaker 2: my mind, anyways, with something like The Witch or It
4:10
Speaker 2: Follows or I mean again, maybe something again. I don't
4:14
Speaker 2: know how unsubtle people want to go with something like this,
4:16
Speaker 2: but with something like The Menu even or The Lighthouse
4:22
Speaker 2: or Hereditary or Midsummer like all of those movies have
4:27
Speaker 2: something in common. That thing in common being the idea
4:30
Speaker 2: that there is something that the movie has a vested
4:34
Speaker 2: interest in getting the audience to understand. Be it. You know,
4:38
Speaker 2: the creature in the movie, and it follows as an
4:41
Speaker 2: STI and you know it's operating the way sexually transmitted
4:44
Speaker 2: diseases do. And so you know, you have this woman
4:47
Speaker 2: being followed by the STI the entire movie, you know,
4:51
Speaker 2: as if it's herpies or aids or something to that effect.
4:54
Speaker 2: And again, like they they thankfully in that movie, they
4:56
Speaker 2: never say, they just kind of again allude to, you know,
5:00
Speaker 2: this is how it's transmitted. And so therefore, you know
5:03
Speaker 2: we're going to have it be an external manifestation of
5:06
Speaker 2: STIs and sexually transmitted diseases and being ostracized for those things.
5:11
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe not literally, but sometimes you know, figuratively
5:14
Speaker 2: or metaphorically. And I really, you know, I don't have
5:18
Speaker 2: an issue with it. I think the issue that I
5:20
Speaker 2: have with it is when it starts to be the
5:23
Speaker 2: same message being regurgitated over and over again without anything
5:28
Speaker 2: interesting or novel in its delivery. I know I'll probably
5:33
Speaker 2: take some flak for this as well. With something like
5:35
Speaker 2: Skin Them a Rink, which I really enjoyed. I actually
5:38
Speaker 2: was one of the first things I bought in a
5:40
Speaker 2: physical media format when I kind of started rebuying physical
5:43
Speaker 2: media thanks to friend of the podcast and frequent collaborated
5:48
Speaker 2: Ryan Verel of Disconnected and the Physical Media Collector. Like
5:52
Speaker 2: I like Skinem a Rink because that's a movie that
5:55
Speaker 2: talks about child abuse and child neglect without really again
6:01
Speaker 2: beating you over the head with it. I think the
6:03
Speaker 2: problem most people had with that movie was less the
6:06
Speaker 2: message of the movie and more that the movie was
6:07
Speaker 2: just kind of esoteric in the way that it delivered
6:10
Speaker 2: the message. And you know, again, it's more of an
6:13
Speaker 2: art house movie. It's a small budget thing. It was,
6:16
Speaker 2: you know, made by one guy, and you know that
6:19
Speaker 2: that's it, Like it's you know, it's a very small
6:22
Speaker 2: scale project compared to something to even like The Witch,
6:25
Speaker 2: which you know, again that is Robert Egger's first film,
6:28
Speaker 2: but it had a budget of four million dollars Skin
6:31
Speaker 2: a Marink I don't even remember what the budget of
6:33
Speaker 2: Skinner Marink is. But the budget of Skinn Marink is
6:36
Speaker 2: not four million dollars. There's no way the budget of
6:39
Speaker 2: Skinn a Marink is four million dollars. The budget of
6:41
Speaker 2: Skinner Rink was fifteen thousand dollars, so you know that's
6:45
Speaker 2: a significantly smaller amount. But again, like they're still trafficking
6:49
Speaker 2: in the same thing. They're both going out of their
6:51
Speaker 2: way to confront a certain message or idea or topic
6:56
Speaker 2: using the vehicle. That is a horror movie. And again,
7:00
Speaker 2: you know, the diminishing returns of it all, I think
7:02
Speaker 2: is the problem for me ultimately, and the diminishing returns
7:06
Speaker 2: of it all is when someone does again the grief
7:10
Speaker 2: monster in a horror movie. Once again, just as a
7:14
Speaker 2: grief monster, you get something like the Boogeyman, which is
7:16
Speaker 2: a perfectly fine adaptation of a Stephen King movie, but
7:19
Speaker 2: it's rather pedestrian in what it's doing, you know, like, oh,
7:23
Speaker 2: you know, it's grief. Grief is a monster. Mental health
7:26
Speaker 2: is a monster. Like and I'm not saying I have
7:28
Speaker 2: an issue with it, you know, as someone who struggles
7:30
Speaker 2: with their own mental health, as someone who you know,
7:33
Speaker 2: went to get you know, diagnosed this year and went
7:36
Speaker 2: and got a PsychEval done and now is in therapy
7:39
Speaker 2: every week. And you know, my therapist said, hey, by
7:43
Speaker 2: the way, you know most people don't, and by most people,
7:46
Speaker 2: she'd never heard of someone going and getting psychevaled on
7:50
Speaker 2: their own volition. Most people do that because of a
7:52
Speaker 2: court order or because someone else says you need to
7:55
Speaker 2: go get it done. I got to that point on
7:57
Speaker 2: my own. I knew something was wrong. I knew something
7:59
Speaker 2: was not okay, and I knew I needed to go
8:01
Speaker 2: and do something about it. And that takes a lot,
8:04
Speaker 2: And you know, I wish I could say the same
8:07
Speaker 2: for everyone else. And if you're listening to this and
8:09
Speaker 2: you have mental health issues and you have insurance, you
8:12
Speaker 2: can probably talk to your doctor and say, hey, I
8:15
Speaker 2: don't think something is okay if we can't do something
8:18
Speaker 2: with medication, which medication doesn't work for all of us.
8:21
Speaker 2: I know that because I took medication that caused me
8:25
Speaker 2: to have sexual impotency issues. It curbed my libido completely.
8:31
Speaker 2: It made me feel less than myself, which it's not
8:35
Speaker 2: something that someone who makes content for a living should
8:37
Speaker 2: be feeling, because not feeling yourself means you're probably not
8:40
Speaker 2: going to be honest with your audience or honest with yourself.
8:43
Speaker 2: And I think the best content comes from being yourself
8:45
Speaker 2: and being honest and being at least as honest as
8:48
Speaker 2: you feel comfortable being. I mean again, you know, I'm
8:50
Speaker 2: not saying I'm pulling punches here, but sometimes you have
8:53
Speaker 2: to speak a little bit more circularly than you can
8:56
Speaker 2: specifically because again people, you know, people's feelings are involved,
9:00
Speaker 2: mine included. So but you know, if you're struggling with
9:03
Speaker 2: mental health, and if you're struggling with not feeling okay
9:06
Speaker 2: on a daily basis, it's okay to go to your
9:09
Speaker 2: doctor or whoever you know, again, like you see for
9:13
Speaker 2: health issues and saying hey, I need to be referred
9:15
Speaker 2: to someone to do a little bit more about this.
9:18
Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with that because again, you know, not
9:21
Speaker 2: everybody has the outlet of art, and that's the thing
9:24
Speaker 2: that you know, someone like Robert Eggers or Zach Krieger
9:28
Speaker 2: or Ari Astor or oh my god, so many of
9:32
Speaker 2: these directors right now, I mean, even Danie ville Neuve,
9:35
Speaker 2: Like Danievilleneuve is I mean again, like you know, he
9:38
Speaker 2: has directed Dune, but he also directed Enemy, which again,
9:41
Speaker 2: like he also directed Prisoners, which is kind of a
9:44
Speaker 2: horror I mean, it's maybe not a horror movie, but again,
9:47
Speaker 2: like you know, it has you know, Weapons, the movie
9:49
Speaker 2: that I'll be talking about more specifically as this episode
9:52
Speaker 2: goes on. I think Weapons and Prisoners would be a
9:55
Speaker 2: very good, a very intense at least in Prisoners spec
10:00
Speaker 2: double feature, because it's about the loss of children and
10:05
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways, the loss of innocence in
10:08
Speaker 2: places where innocence doesn't necessarily need to be lost, especially
10:13
Speaker 2: with children in yeah, I mean children in such a
10:18
Speaker 2: young age that you know, it's I mean, look, children
10:21
Speaker 2: disappearing is always going to be bad. But these are
10:23
Speaker 2: children from an elementary third grade class, so they're children
10:27
Speaker 2: under the age of ten, I you know, and that's
10:31
Speaker 2: you know, God, it's you know, it's bad enough when
10:33
Speaker 2: it's one kid, but when they're seventeen children disappearing from
10:36
Speaker 2: one class, you know that that takes I think precedent
10:40
Speaker 2: over pretty much anything else, you know. I think what's
10:42
Speaker 2: funny is obviously with something like Weapons, Weapons is a
10:46
Speaker 2: little more fantastical in the presentation of the world that
10:50
Speaker 2: we're in, you know, in a lot of ways, I
10:52
Speaker 2: feel like Weapons almost doesn't exist in reality. Weapons exist
10:56
Speaker 2: in a heightened reality. I think Barbarian a movie that
10:59
Speaker 2: I resonate with a lot less than Weapons, I think
11:02
Speaker 2: also existed in that heightened reality. And I think for
11:04
Speaker 2: me when I was watching Barbarian that didn't work for
11:08
Speaker 2: me in Barbarian because in Barbarian it felt like the
11:11
Speaker 2: movie would have worked better if it had been grounded
11:14
Speaker 2: further in reality and the kind of fantastical nature of Oh,
11:17
Speaker 2: there's spoilers for that movie, and there will be spoilers
11:20
Speaker 2: for Weapons as well. From this point on. There's tunnels
11:24
Speaker 2: underneath this building and oh my god, it's all underneath this,
11:27
Speaker 2: and there's Richard Brake and the like. It's it's just
11:31
Speaker 2: those fantastical elements didn't really jibe with the environment above
11:36
Speaker 2: ground as it were. Those elements didn't work together. And
11:39
Speaker 2: in Weapons there is that same nature of kind of
11:42
Speaker 2: the concealed truth that is lying just beneath the suburbia.
11:47
Speaker 2: And and you know, in Barbarian it's it's the decayed,
11:51
Speaker 2: this the dystopian suburbia, and weapons it's the suburbia of
11:56
Speaker 2: blue velvet. I mean, there's there's something very Lynchian in Weapons,
12:00
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm not saying it's David Lynch in tone,
12:03
Speaker 2: but David Lynch was always interested in the world outside
12:08
Speaker 2: and the world beneath being incongruent with one another. And
12:12
Speaker 2: you know, Blue Velvet, when Kyle McLaughlin finds that ear
12:15
Speaker 2: in the front yard, I mean, that's a I mean,
12:17
Speaker 2: you know, in suburbia, the last thing you would ever
12:20
Speaker 2: expect to find is a disembodied ear in your front yard.
12:23
Speaker 2: And in Weapons, you know, we have the Austin Abrams character,
12:27
Speaker 2: the homeless drug addict and thief, who spends most of
12:32
Speaker 2: the movie out of sorts, showing us what happens when
12:35
Speaker 2: your entire life is taken over by addiction and every
12:38
Speaker 2: single moment is spent looking out for yourself because society is,
12:42
Speaker 2: you know, again seemingly not looking out for you. And
12:46
Speaker 2: in this country, we have a really bad track record
12:49
Speaker 2: with taking care of people that are struggling with mental health,
12:53
Speaker 2: and we have an even harder time taking care of
12:56
Speaker 2: people that are struggling with addiction because so many people
12:58
Speaker 2: can't even acknowledge that addiction is a disease and that
13:02
Speaker 2: it needs to be you know, treated, and that there
13:05
Speaker 2: are ways to help people with addiction and they don't
13:07
Speaker 2: need to be ostracized from society. And you know that
13:10
Speaker 2: there are some people that you know, sometimes the addiction
13:13
Speaker 2: is just so overwhelming and so all encompassing that you know,
13:17
Speaker 2: sometimes there is seemingly no way out, and you know
13:20
Speaker 2: those people need more help, and those people do need
13:23
Speaker 2: to be focused on more because there are people that
13:25
Speaker 2: don't struggle from addiction at all, and congratulations, I'm not
13:28
Speaker 2: saying I do, but I struggle for mental health issues,
13:31
Speaker 2: which you know are are crippling in their own right.
13:35
Speaker 2: And so the thing that's interesting about something like weapons
13:38
Speaker 2: is similarly to blue velvet, similar lead to barbarian, but
13:41
Speaker 2: I think it works better in weapons is we see
13:43
Speaker 2: the undercurrent of the world that is seemingly on the
13:48
Speaker 2: up and ups and everything is perfect on the outside,
13:51
Speaker 2: but just below the surface we have we have the
13:54
Speaker 2: alden ahnright character, who is kind of the personification of that.
13:57
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, he has the perfect how seemingly
14:01
Speaker 2: with How did this get Made's June Dian Rayfield, which
14:04
Speaker 2: I can't stand seeing her in anything she is, look though,
14:09
Speaker 2: how did this get made?
14:10
Speaker 1: Of it?
14:10
Speaker 2: Aside which I'm not a super big fan of because again,
14:14
Speaker 2: just laughing, joking numbnuts about movies for an hour and
14:18
Speaker 2: just not adding anything to the conversation other than tearing
14:21
Speaker 2: down other people's work for your own self benefit is fine,
14:24
Speaker 2: and you know, I mean again, there's a need and
14:27
Speaker 2: want for that in the world of podcasting, and we
14:29
Speaker 2: have a good time here at weirding Way Media. But
14:32
Speaker 2: I'm not really interested in tearing other people's work down
14:35
Speaker 2: because I think it's funny. We can make jokes, and
14:37
Speaker 2: there are bad movies out there, objectively bad movies that
14:41
Speaker 2: deserve to be poked fun at and asked, how the
14:43
Speaker 2: fuck did this get made? It's a good question. It's
14:45
Speaker 2: a worthy name for a podcast. I just don't think
14:48
Speaker 2: they ever actually answer the question. I think it's just
14:51
Speaker 2: about trafficking in their notoriety and fame because all they're
14:55
Speaker 2: three celebrities who have a podcast, and that's why people
14:57
Speaker 2: are going to listen to it, because they're comedians and
15:00
Speaker 2: they have a leg up congratulations. I'm not a fan
15:03
Speaker 2: of her. I'm not a fan of her in this movie.
15:05
Speaker 2: I you know, her scenes with al Dinner are fine.
15:09
Speaker 2: I like him a lot. He's like one of the
15:12
Speaker 2: best parts of that Han Solo movie, if not the
15:14
Speaker 2: best part of that Han Solo movie, a movie that
15:16
Speaker 2: is not I don't know. People have kind of forgotten
15:19
Speaker 2: that it happened, and you know that's probably the pre
15:22
Speaker 2: pandemic of it all, but also the who really needed
15:24
Speaker 2: it and who really cares of it all? I you know,
15:27
Speaker 2: in retrospect, it's a lot more interesting and exciting than
15:30
Speaker 2: those three sequel films ended up being. And look, did
15:33
Speaker 2: we need a Han Solo movie?
15:35
Speaker 1: No?
15:35
Speaker 2: Did we need a Han Solo movie that answers the
15:37
Speaker 2: question of how did Hans Solo get his last name? No?
15:40
Speaker 2: Did we need to see Amelia Clark in the Han
15:43
Speaker 2: Solo universe doing Han Solo things? You know, Alden Aaron
15:48
Speaker 2: Reich and her in that Star Wars movie, like they
15:51
Speaker 2: have zero chemistry together, but man Alden Aaron Reich and
15:54
Speaker 2: Julia Garner, the little bit of time that they're on
15:57
Speaker 2: screen together, which is like three scenes and weapons, the
16:00
Speaker 2: two of them have really great chemistry. I would love
16:03
Speaker 2: to see them in something else together where they're given
16:06
Speaker 2: a little bit more time to play off of one another,
16:08
Speaker 2: because the two of them is great. You can actually
16:10
Speaker 2: completely understand why he would be so drawn to her
16:15
Speaker 2: because the energy that she has is you know, she's
16:19
Speaker 2: one of the principal characters in the film. It's her
16:22
Speaker 2: and Josh Brolin and Alden, Aaron Reik and then Austin Abrams,
16:26
Speaker 2: and then at the end of the movie we get
16:27
Speaker 2: Kerry Christopher's Alex. But it's again like that's that's maybe
16:30
Speaker 2: my one kind of bigger issue with this movie is
16:33
Speaker 2: the long legs of it all. And we'll get to
16:35
Speaker 2: that when we get to them in terms of like
16:37
Speaker 2: criticism of the movie, or at least, you know, like
16:39
Speaker 2: critiquing of the movie less talking about the message and
16:42
Speaker 2: the issues that the movie's talking about. But I like
16:46
Speaker 2: the chemistry that Julia Garner has with everybody. I think
16:49
Speaker 2: Julia Garner is one of the best actresses working right now.
16:52
Speaker 2: I mean, from Ozarks to The Silver Surfer and Fantastic
16:56
Speaker 2: Four to this to I mean a lot of stuff,
17:00
Speaker 2: a lot of things I haven't seen admittedly, Like I
17:04
Speaker 2: know she was in The Americans, I know she was
17:06
Speaker 2: in Dirty John. You know, she was anasoricin and inventing Anna,
17:11
Speaker 2: which I know again is kind of the thing that
17:13
Speaker 2: put her on the map for a lot of people,
17:15
Speaker 2: especially pandemic wise, and the kind of accent that she
17:19
Speaker 2: was doing in that is is kind of I guess
17:21
Speaker 2: it's become kind of a meme unto itself. But I
17:24
Speaker 2: haven't seen Ozark, and this movie kind of would put
17:29
Speaker 2: me in the camp of going out of my way
17:31
Speaker 2: to watch. It's solely based on her performance and ability
17:34
Speaker 2: to act. And again, like, she's such a good actress,
17:37
Speaker 2: and it's almost unfair because there's so many actors working
17:40
Speaker 2: right now who are just so naturalistic, and she's one
17:43
Speaker 2: of them, Like she just it feels effortless the way
17:46
Speaker 2: she she makes acting look. And I think that those
17:48
Speaker 2: are the people that inherently are the ones that are
17:51
Speaker 2: the most gifted, are the ones who when you watch
17:53
Speaker 2: them act, it doesn't feel like you put on You
17:55
Speaker 2: can see everything that the actor is trying to get
17:58
Speaker 2: across from the script on their face, and they add
18:03
Speaker 2: so much by just their sheer physicality alone and their
18:06
Speaker 2: presence on screen and so many like of the shots
18:10
Speaker 2: in the middle part of the movie, especially during the
18:13
Speaker 2: Justine Gandy parts of the movie where it's her narrative,
18:16
Speaker 2: are like close up shots of her and her reacting
18:19
Speaker 2: to things and just giving just you know Justine or
18:23
Speaker 2: you know Julia Garner more specifically, the ability to react
18:26
Speaker 2: and is she a scream queen? I you know know,
18:28
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I mean, you have to be
18:30
Speaker 2: in more than one horror movie to do that. And look,
18:34
Speaker 2: I'm not I'm not not a fan of Wolfman. I
18:38
Speaker 2: think Wolfman is a movie that you know, it came
18:41
Speaker 2: out earlier this year. I watched it. It's not terrible.
18:45
Speaker 2: I think there are some interesting ideas there. Obviously, you know,
18:49
Speaker 2: essentially doing Wolfman as the Wolfman but the fly, which
18:54
Speaker 2: is what that movie is, which I mean again I
18:57
Speaker 2: found to be an interesting premise. I'm not sure how
18:59
Speaker 2: well x acut it. It is that movie is also about
19:02
Speaker 2: generational trauma because the father in the movie, uh is
19:07
Speaker 2: the one turning into the wolf, and his dad turned
19:09
Speaker 2: into the wolf. But his dad was a strage from
19:11
Speaker 2: his family because his dad was a were wolf. It's
19:13
Speaker 2: werewolf ism or likenthroat be for you know, dead beat parenting,
19:18
Speaker 2: I guess. And you know, in weapons, we don't get
19:21
Speaker 2: dead beat parents and weapons. We get helicopter parents and weapons.
19:24
Speaker 2: We get justifiably pissed parents and weapons. And that's where
19:27
Speaker 2: the Josh Brolin of it all comes in. Josh Brolin,
19:30
Speaker 2: who I love in everything I've ever seen him in.
19:34
Speaker 2: He is one of my favorite actors. He has an
19:37
Speaker 2: intensity to him that I really appreciate. And I think
19:40
Speaker 2: that his intensity again similarly to Julia Garner, like he
19:43
Speaker 2: doesn't it doesn't feel like a put on. And then
19:45
Speaker 2: when you see him in interviews on you know, like
19:48
Speaker 2: Colbert or I mean anything really any sort of kind
19:52
Speaker 2: of just Josh Brolin being Josh Brolin, I think that
19:56
Speaker 2: he really shines as an actor because he you know,
20:00
Speaker 2: and as a personality even because he just seems, I
20:03
Speaker 2: don't know, he seems able to be serious but also
20:06
Speaker 2: not take himself seriously, which you know, as someone who
20:10
Speaker 2: has been in things like No Country for Old Men.
20:13
Speaker 2: But then also I think has played one of you know,
20:16
Speaker 2: the great villains of all time with Fanos in a
20:19
Speaker 2: Marvel movie, I think, and he's like the quintessential Marvel
20:22
Speaker 2: villain at this point. And you know, Josh Brolin has
20:25
Speaker 2: so many roles at this point that you could say like, well,
20:27
Speaker 2: that's the role or that's the role. I mean, for
20:29
Speaker 2: some people, it will never be anything more than the Goonies,
20:32
Speaker 2: for fuck's sake. And again I'm not even I'm not
20:35
Speaker 2: a Goonies guy by any stretch of the imagination. Like
20:37
Speaker 2: I saw The Goonies way later in life. I you know,
20:39
Speaker 2: it's not a movie I grew up on. But again,
20:42
Speaker 2: The Goonies, similarly to Weapons, is a movie about heightened
20:46
Speaker 2: reality and broad stereotypes being painted and those stereotypes existing
20:53
Speaker 2: as characters. We have the alcoholic, you know, put upon
20:55
Speaker 2: teacher who's being accused of being a witch. We have
20:58
Speaker 2: the dad who wants his son back. We have the
21:01
Speaker 2: other parents in the town who are just you know,
21:04
Speaker 2: stricken with fear and grief, like Justin Long and Sarah
21:08
Speaker 2: Paxton showing up for a cup of coffee. We have
21:11
Speaker 2: you know, the gay principle and his husband or who
21:15
Speaker 2: you know are so empathetic to the Amy Madigan character,
21:20
Speaker 2: who you know is obviously there's something clearly up. But hey,
21:24
Speaker 2: you know what, like we're gonna be the good people
21:26
Speaker 2: that we are to the end, and we're gonna be
21:27
Speaker 2: punished in a horror movie for being good people, which
21:29
Speaker 2: you know, does it suck? Sure? And I think it
21:32
Speaker 2: actually ups the ante of of Benedict Wong's character. But yeah,
21:38
Speaker 2: you know, Benedict Quean and Clayton Ferris playing you know,
21:41
Speaker 2: the the the the stereotypical gay couple again like nothing
21:44
Speaker 2: wrong with it, just like they're written so specifically that again,
21:49
Speaker 2: like it does feel like a fairy tale, almost like
21:51
Speaker 2: a modern day fairy tale. And I like that about
21:54
Speaker 2: this movie. I mean, I like that it feels like
21:56
Speaker 2: a modern day fairy tale. It feels very much like
21:59
Speaker 2: in the r aster of it all I mean hereditary
22:02
Speaker 2: and especially I mean, if you watch the director's cut
22:05
Speaker 2: of Midsummer, that movie is hardcore a fairy tale. I
22:08
Speaker 2: mean they show the entire movie at the beginning of
22:11
Speaker 2: the movie in a fairy tale presentation, with the kind
22:15
Speaker 2: of imagery and artwork of a fairy tale, because it
22:19
Speaker 2: shows the entire story in picture book form. And then
22:22
Speaker 2: there's a part in that movie where we're kind of
22:24
Speaker 2: having this panning shot of the camera over these giant
22:27
Speaker 2: cloth kind of tapestries of the story of how one
22:31
Speaker 2: of the characters entraps the other character to fall in
22:33
Speaker 2: love with them. Like that, that movie is about the
22:36
Speaker 2: stories that we tell and the stories that are being told,
22:40
Speaker 2: and the way we mythologize things. And you know, sometimes
22:42
Speaker 2: you know, you know, a person just sometimes it's a
22:45
Speaker 2: person being forced to jump off a cliff, and sometimes
22:47
Speaker 2: a person is jumping off the cliff of their own volition,
22:50
Speaker 2: and one of those answers is a little bit more
22:52
Speaker 2: romantic than the other. Even if it's a little more
22:55
Speaker 2: even if it's just as horrifying, there is a little
22:57
Speaker 2: bit of romanticism to the idea of well, I'm gonna
23:00
Speaker 2: turn seventy two and I'm gonna jump off of a cliff.
23:04
Speaker 2: He know. Again, like I'm not agreeing with it, but
23:06
Speaker 2: Midsummer's kind of trafficking in the fairy tale nature of
23:10
Speaker 2: you know, kind of the narrative it's presenting. I think
23:12
Speaker 2: Weapons does the same thing. Maybe not as like obviously,
23:16
Speaker 2: but you know, you do have that opening framing device
23:20
Speaker 2: of the child narrator talking about you know, if you
23:23
Speaker 2: come to our town, you'll, you know, and you ask
23:26
Speaker 2: the people who actually know, they'll tell you what happened.
23:29
Speaker 2: But if you were to ask the official you know,
23:31
Speaker 2: this was the official story, nobody knows, and you know,
23:34
Speaker 2: like I like that framing device. You know. I know
23:37
Speaker 2: that the original version of the movie didn't have ending narration,
23:40
Speaker 2: which I think would have been interesting. But I think
23:43
Speaker 2: to be fair, if you're gonna put opening narration in
23:45
Speaker 2: the movie, you should probably put outro narration just to
23:47
Speaker 2: kind of wrap the movie up in one little, tight
23:49
Speaker 2: and eat bow. And again it gives you the opportunity
23:52
Speaker 2: to do something that the movie wouldn't necessarily allow you
23:56
Speaker 2: to do otherwise, which is contextualize what you're seeing externally,
24:01
Speaker 2: because most of, if not all, of the story that
24:04
Speaker 2: we're seeing is being told from character, like the entire narrative,
24:08
Speaker 2: and the benefit of the narrative is the way that
24:10
Speaker 2: it's told, which is in a very non linear fashion.
24:13
Speaker 2: I mean, we pingpong around from character to character to
24:16
Speaker 2: character to character to character, and there's nothing wrong with that,
24:19
Speaker 2: but because of the way you tell the narrative, and
24:21
Speaker 2: because of the very narrow focus that each level of
24:25
Speaker 2: the narrative is given, we are intentionally not given all
24:30
Speaker 2: the information ahead of time. And for me, I I
24:34
Speaker 2: appreciate that storytelling device, but I do feel like there
24:38
Speaker 2: is a little less of the gimmick of the movie
24:42
Speaker 2: will wear off in repeat viewings because it has already
24:45
Speaker 2: worn off for me and repeat viewings as it is,
24:48
Speaker 2: because the fairy tale of it, like, there's there's some
24:50
Speaker 2: parts of the movie where I'm like, I don't I
24:52
Speaker 2: don't think that this is you know, works in any
24:55
Speaker 2: other way other than this like fairy tale aspect. And
24:58
Speaker 2: that's how I kind of have to convince myself of
25:00
Speaker 2: parts of this movie working better than others, because in
25:04
Speaker 2: something like Barbarian that doesn't have that laser focused tone,
25:09
Speaker 2: because it's able to meander a little bit more because
25:11
Speaker 2: it's being told in a more narratively straightforward linear fashion.
25:16
Speaker 2: This movie doesn't have that, And because it doesn't have that,
25:19
Speaker 2: it is a little bit more obduse with what it's doing.
25:23
Speaker 2: But it does require at the end of the movie
25:25
Speaker 2: the kind of once the once we have the key
25:28
Speaker 2: put into the lock, that we discover, Okay, this is
25:31
Speaker 2: you know, this is the this is this is the
25:34
Speaker 2: dodge here, this is the this is what we're all
25:37
Speaker 2: waiting for the reveal. What's the reveal? How do we
25:40
Speaker 2: how has the trick been pulled over? You know our eyes?
25:43
Speaker 2: What is the wool here? What is going on? It
25:46
Speaker 2: feels a little bit like Long Legs and I wasn't
25:49
Speaker 2: necessarily a fan of it, and Long Legs and I'm
25:51
Speaker 2: not necessarily a fan of it here where we just
25:53
Speaker 2: have the entire movie recontextualized in one ten minute scene
25:58
Speaker 2: and in this movie, it does the same things his
26:00
Speaker 2: long legs like in the in the in the end
26:02
Speaker 2: of the second act, beginning of the third act. In
26:04
Speaker 2: this movie, it's an extended third act about you know,
26:06
Speaker 2: thirty minutes with Alex's story. We learn why Alex has
26:11
Speaker 2: been the way he's been, and what's been going on
26:13
Speaker 2: and why he didn't disappear and who is this you know,
26:16
Speaker 2: redheaded woman. We've been seeing the whole movie, like, you know,
26:19
Speaker 2: you know, some of that's answered early on when we
26:22
Speaker 2: see Marcus going after you know, Justine, when we see
26:26
Speaker 2: Bennetictuane going after Julia Garner's character, and we understand that's
26:29
Speaker 2: what's going on, and you know, she's you know, but
26:31
Speaker 2: we don't understand who she is really and what her
26:35
Speaker 2: deal is. Really. We can guess, we can make leaps,
26:38
Speaker 2: but in the third act of the movie, they pretty
26:40
Speaker 2: much just lay it all out, and again, it just
26:43
Speaker 2: there's got to be a better way to do it.
26:45
Speaker 2: Maybe not, and maybe it doesn't bother anybody, and maybe
26:48
Speaker 2: it's you know, the how, how done it? Who done it?
26:50
Speaker 2: How catch him of it all? And it's like, well,
26:52
Speaker 2: you know, maybe did you figure it out? Along with
26:54
Speaker 2: the movie, or you know, are you behind and is
26:57
Speaker 2: the movie going to reveal something to you that you
26:59
Speaker 2: didn't realize? Like, again, that's kind of what it feels like.
27:02
Speaker 2: I'm not a huge fan of just laying it all out.
27:05
Speaker 2: And you know, there are subtle scenes in this movie,
27:07
Speaker 2: like a shot of the back of Josh Brolin's pickup
27:09
Speaker 2: truck with the paint making it clear that he's the
27:12
Speaker 2: one who painted which on the side of Julia Garner's car,
27:15
Speaker 2: Like there are subtle ties in this movie that the
27:18
Speaker 2: movie knows it can do. You know, they keep mentioning
27:21
Speaker 2: parasites on the TVs over and over again. I mean,
27:24
Speaker 2: at some point that feels a little more unsubtle than
27:26
Speaker 2: it does subtle. But you know, those kinds of things
27:29
Speaker 2: in the movie work for me better than just going
27:32
Speaker 2: and we'll just lay it all out and have one
27:35
Speaker 2: character just regurgitate essentially what the director's point is or
27:40
Speaker 2: the kind of who, what, where, when and why and
27:43
Speaker 2: now we'll let it go. I'm just not a big
27:46
Speaker 2: fan of it because it grinds the momentum and the
27:50
Speaker 2: tone of the movie to a halt. And I actually,
27:53
Speaker 2: again I vibe with the tone of this movie a lot,
27:56
Speaker 2: because again, it does feel like elevated fairy tale story
27:59
Speaker 2: to tell, and at least the way that these kinds
28:02
Speaker 2: of movies can. The tone of this movie feels very heightened,
28:05
Speaker 2: just like the Goonies, I mean the Goonies and the Goonies.
28:08
Speaker 2: The kids run into a monster, you know, sloth underground
28:13
Speaker 2: like that, you know again, like that, that's a heightened reality,
28:16
Speaker 2: always gonna go live with them forever, oh, you know.
28:18
Speaker 2: And then again in this movie, at the end of
28:20
Speaker 2: the movie, we have the kids being returned to their families,
28:22
Speaker 2: but you know, some of them don't have the ability
28:25
Speaker 2: to speak. Again, some of them do, and you know,
28:28
Speaker 2: the kid's parents at the end of the movie, Alex's parents,
28:30
Speaker 2: they're put in an institution. And it's just kind of like,
28:33
Speaker 2: all right, sure, like that, there's no stakes to that,
28:36
Speaker 2: there's no there's no I don't know, like there's no
28:40
Speaker 2: stakes to it because it doesn't need to have steaks.
28:44
Speaker 2: It just needs to be a fairy tale. And that's
28:46
Speaker 2: the thing about this movie that's hard for me to
28:49
Speaker 2: kind of wrap my head around in the third act
28:51
Speaker 2: is if it's a fairy tale. Fairy tales aren't about
28:54
Speaker 2: over explaining things. Fairy tales are about a message being
28:58
Speaker 2: kind of conveyed to the audience, and I think in
29:01
Speaker 2: a lot of ways, Zach Kreeger should have trusted his
29:04
Speaker 2: audience just a little bit more and maybe broken the
29:08
Speaker 2: Alex narrative into smaller bits throughout the movie and not
29:13
Speaker 2: just weighed it down at the end of the movie
29:14
Speaker 2: where we have to have everything explained now, Like having
29:18
Speaker 2: Amy Madigan flashed on screen throughout the movie, I think
29:21
Speaker 2: was good enough, Like I don't don't need everything explained
29:24
Speaker 2: for me, and I like Amy Madigan a lot in
29:26
Speaker 2: this movie. I just think in a lot of ways,
29:28
Speaker 2: like her and Alex back and forth is just like
29:31
Speaker 2: exposition exposition, exposition, exposition, back and forth and back and forth.
29:35
Speaker 2: It's like, I'm not here for this because this isn't
29:38
Speaker 2: what I vibed with the movie. I vibed with the
29:40
Speaker 2: tone of this movie a lot. I vibed with the
29:43
Speaker 2: fact that we have parents looking for kids, and the
29:47
Speaker 2: parents are stricken with grief to the point of not
29:50
Speaker 2: being able to, you know, with with Josh Brolin, he's
29:53
Speaker 2: unable to do anything else. And I like the idea of,
29:56
Speaker 2: you know, the third act of this movie, Zach Kreeger
29:58
Speaker 2: has said, is very autobiographical because he had alcoholic parents,
30:01
Speaker 2: and you know, that's an addiction, and it's an addictive
30:05
Speaker 2: quality that makes you an alcoholic. And in Josh Brolin's case,
30:09
Speaker 2: he's addicted to grief. He's addicted to the hunt and
30:12
Speaker 2: the search for his son. And you see that throughout
30:15
Speaker 2: his whole narrative. We see him sleeping in his son's bed,
30:19
Speaker 2: We see him essentially not going to work. We see
30:22
Speaker 2: him sitting in front of his computer looking at these
30:24
Speaker 2: videos of the kids running into the distance with their
30:27
Speaker 2: arms kind of askew. Like all Josh Brolin does the
30:30
Speaker 2: entire movie is look for his son. He is singular
30:33
Speaker 2: focused and narrow minded in cause. And I think for me,
30:39
Speaker 2: that really works in the movie because we get the
30:42
Speaker 2: addiction narrative at the end of the movie with Alex's
30:45
Speaker 2: parents and you know him feeding his parents, you know,
30:48
Speaker 2: hating to take care of them. But we also get
30:51
Speaker 2: to watch Josh Brolin, who was clearly the breadwinner for
30:54
Speaker 2: his family, not taking care of himself and what that
30:57
Speaker 2: means for his relationship and his house sold him not
31:00
Speaker 2: taking care of himself because he is only focusing on
31:03
Speaker 2: where his son is, which again is understandable given that
31:06
Speaker 2: his son disappeared, and the longer it takes after someone
31:10
Speaker 2: disappears to find them or to find the lead, the
31:12
Speaker 2: less likelihood that they're alive. I mean, that's the other thing.
31:15
Speaker 2: You know, obviously unrealistic that these kids would even be
31:18
Speaker 2: alive at this point, but you know, again, it is
31:20
Speaker 2: a movie, and nothing wrong with movies trying to be
31:24
Speaker 2: a little less realistic. But yeah, I mean, this movie
31:26
Speaker 2: is about witches ultimately at the end of the day,
31:29
Speaker 2: and not only is it about witches, but it's about
31:33
Speaker 2: how witches weaponize and are weaponized again by either you know, again,
31:41
Speaker 2: if we look at something like Salem, which the idea
31:43
Speaker 2: of someone being a witch was a tool that was
31:47
Speaker 2: used to weaponize society against people, to then use that
31:52
Speaker 2: which witch or being a witch as an excuse to
31:56
Speaker 2: you know, take people's land away and murder them and
31:58
Speaker 2: have them burned at the stake or stoned to death,
32:01
Speaker 2: and that's the weaponization of people against one another. But
32:05
Speaker 2: then in this movie, you know, the title of Weapons
32:09
Speaker 2: is about the idea that this woman Glad is the
32:13
Speaker 2: aunt of Alex, though it's never actually confirmed that she's
32:15
Speaker 2: his aunt or anything of relation. We just get the
32:19
Speaker 2: sense that, oh, well, there's this woman. Like again, we
32:21
Speaker 2: don't know if her powers are so far reaching that
32:23
Speaker 2: she could have convinced these people externally of who she
32:26
Speaker 2: is and weaseled her way in. I mean again, she
32:28
Speaker 2: is again, if the movie's narrative is to be believed,
32:31
Speaker 2: she is a parasite. So the idea that this woman
32:35
Speaker 2: comes into this town and takes over with such ease,
32:39
Speaker 2: and takes over this household and causes such a you know,
32:43
Speaker 2: such a problem and such a nightmare for this town,
32:46
Speaker 2: and then in the process of utilizing a child as
32:51
Speaker 2: a weapon against his own classmates, because she asks, Alex,
32:54
Speaker 2: you know, if you don't help me get pieces of
32:58
Speaker 2: each of your schoolmates or hair or personal effects. If
33:03
Speaker 2: you don't get me something, I'm gonna let you. I'm
33:05
Speaker 2: gonna kill your parents. I'm gonna let your parents eat
33:07
Speaker 2: each other. Because she's essentially a parasite. She's a flatworm,
33:11
Speaker 2: she's a tapeworm. She's draining his parents to stay alive.
33:14
Speaker 2: Because we get the sense that Gladys is hundreds of
33:17
Speaker 2: years old, at least I would assume, I mean again,
33:20
Speaker 2: you know, the movie does a good job of subtly
33:23
Speaker 2: getting us to these points. The movie doesn't need to
33:26
Speaker 2: explain everything, and again I think some of this is
33:29
Speaker 2: just you know, Zach Kreeger having to make changes based
33:32
Speaker 2: on studio notes. I mean, again, the ending being a
33:36
Speaker 2: little bit more subtle than it is now with narration,
33:39
Speaker 2: with no narration before and narration now. You know, again
33:42
Speaker 2: I enjoyed the narration because it does fit the circular
33:46
Speaker 2: kind of storytelling, you know, someone telling a story, opening
33:49
Speaker 2: it and then you know, the cutting back out of
33:51
Speaker 2: the story at the end, back to the just of
33:53
Speaker 2: the narration. It does work for me. But also it
33:57
Speaker 2: again over explains everything, and I appreciate again the David
34:02
Speaker 2: Lynch of it all not explaining everything because I as
34:06
Speaker 2: as an audience member, I'm engaged. I am genuinely directly
34:10
Speaker 2: engaged with the movie, and the movie does not need
34:13
Speaker 2: to worry about me not being engaged. But I also
34:15
Speaker 2: understand that, you know, there is a possibility that not
34:19
Speaker 2: everybody's going to be engaged, and that might be the problem,
34:22
Speaker 2: that could be an issue, and if you want to
34:24
Speaker 2: make sure people are engaged, you maybe need to drip
34:26
Speaker 2: feed them a little bit more and a little less
34:29
Speaker 2: esoteric would be a lot more helpful for mainstream audiences.
34:32
Speaker 2: And look, this movie thirty eight million dollar budget box
34:36
Speaker 2: office two hundred and sixty million. That's a lot of money.
34:39
Speaker 2: It's a success, one of the biggest successes of this year.
34:42
Speaker 2: Horror movies are. I mean, horror is broken through from
34:47
Speaker 2: being just a genre that has been looked down on
34:50
Speaker 2: by the kind of cognizante of Hollywood because all people
34:54
Speaker 2: just get their start and horror and it's one peg
34:56
Speaker 2: above porn. Like, no, it's not one fucking peg above
35:00
Speaker 2: horror in a lot of ways, and at least in
35:02
Speaker 2: my opinion, I think horror is the genre that still
35:05
Speaker 2: has the longest legs because it allows you to either
35:09
Speaker 2: subtly or unsubtly, directly or indirectly address things that other
35:13
Speaker 2: movies can't do in as entertaining a way as horror. Now, look,
35:18
Speaker 2: maybe you know a marriage story isn't necessarily going to
35:22
Speaker 2: have You know, a movie that talks about divorce that
35:25
Speaker 2: isn't a marriage story may not have as much legs
35:27
Speaker 2: to it as a marriage story in terms of getting
35:29
Speaker 2: the message across. But a horror movie about divorce and
35:33
Speaker 2: a falling apart marriage would probably be a little bit
35:36
Speaker 2: more entertaining at least, or maybe a little bit more fun,
35:39
Speaker 2: I think, because that's the thing about weapons, you know,
35:41
Speaker 2: at the center of it, Weapons is about seventeen children
35:44
Speaker 2: disappearing in this country where people seem to not care
35:47
Speaker 2: about children at all because we allow things like weapons
35:51
Speaker 2: to you know, weapons, the actual thing. And as a
35:54
Speaker 2: gun owner, I have a mixed feelings about a lot
35:57
Speaker 2: of this because you know, I am a responsible gun owner,
36:01
Speaker 2: like most gun owners are, because again, you know, most
36:05
Speaker 2: people don't. You know, it's always a smaller percentage of
36:08
Speaker 2: people ruining it for the greater percentage of people, obviously,
36:11
Speaker 2: And as a responsible gun owner of a weapon, as
36:14
Speaker 2: this movie so clearly points out, you know, people in
36:18
Speaker 2: this country fane. You know, they do performative theater about grief.
36:22
Speaker 2: And you know, the thing about Josh Brolin's character in
36:24
Speaker 2: this movie is it's not remotely performative at all, like
36:27
Speaker 2: you get because he's all consumed by the grief. But
36:30
Speaker 2: you know, there's performative grief in this country because we
36:33
Speaker 2: don't seem to care about children dying in school shootings
36:37
Speaker 2: when weapons are used, and again kids in this movie
36:40
Speaker 2: are being turned into weapons. Normally weapons are being used
36:44
Speaker 2: on kids in these school shootings, that's the thing. Weapons
36:48
Speaker 2: are being used by sometimes adults, sometimes other kids on
36:52
Speaker 2: other kids. And you know, again the weaponization of Alex
36:56
Speaker 2: by Gladys so that he can hurt his classmates so
37:00
Speaker 2: that she doesn't hurt his family is you know, again
37:03
Speaker 2: like it's chilling, it's haunting. But again it does cut
37:06
Speaker 2: back to the idea of what is the theme of
37:09
Speaker 2: the movie, what is the point of the movie? And
37:11
Speaker 2: the point of the movie is you know, trauma comes
37:14
Speaker 2: from all direction, and you know, we can either have
37:18
Speaker 2: trauma put upon us by other people, like again, Gladys
37:23
Speaker 2: doing to all the parents in this town, taking their
37:25
Speaker 2: children away from them in the middle of the night.
37:28
Speaker 2: And again, if not for the fact that Josh Brolin
37:31
Speaker 2: and Julia Garner are able to figure out what's going on,
37:34
Speaker 2: because even the cops are so a nep they can't
37:36
Speaker 2: figure it out. Uh, if not for the fact that
37:39
Speaker 2: they figure it out, these parents would still be without children.
37:43
Speaker 2: You know, Gladys puts trauma on these parents that would
37:46
Speaker 2: have never gone away. And then you know, you have
37:48
Speaker 2: the self trauma of again the addiction angle with the
37:53
Speaker 2: Alden Ehrenreich character and the Austin Abrams character of you know,
37:57
Speaker 2: a ex alcoholic and a current drug addict, and what
38:02
Speaker 2: does that mean for you know, what does that mean
38:04
Speaker 2: for them? And how you know, are they more susceptible
38:07
Speaker 2: to being weaponized because of the kind of inherent kind
38:12
Speaker 2: of vulnerability of who they are just by their addiction.
38:15
Speaker 2: And you know, it would seem that while the movie
38:17
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily outright or you know, in you know, like
38:21
Speaker 2: explicitly say that, you know, it is kind of interesting
38:24
Speaker 2: to note who is weaponized in this movie easily. And
38:28
Speaker 2: the people that are easily weaponized in this movie are
38:31
Speaker 2: the the cop who's an ex alcoholic and the drug
38:35
Speaker 2: addict who's homeless. They seem to be the ones that
38:37
Speaker 2: were easily weaponized, while you know, everyone else kind of
38:41
Speaker 2: she had to work a lot harder, Like Gladys had
38:43
Speaker 2: to work a lot harder for Alex's parents than she
38:45
Speaker 2: did for James and Paul. She had to work a
38:48
Speaker 2: lot harder for Marcus. You know, she had to really
38:50
Speaker 2: weasele her way, you know, like a like a vampire
38:53
Speaker 2: into their house. Uh, And man, the scene, the scene
38:58
Speaker 2: with Marcus and his husband and Gladys. You know again,
39:01
Speaker 2: it's it's the most uncomfortable scene in the movie where
39:04
Speaker 2: he is headbutting his husband to death. It's not great,
39:07
Speaker 2: it's hard to watch. I would say, it's the talk
39:10
Speaker 2: to Me scene of this movie, you know, the scene
39:12
Speaker 2: and talk to Me where they're they're performing the seance
39:15
Speaker 2: and and the younger brother gets in on it like
39:17
Speaker 2: that that scene in that movie. That's this. That's this
39:21
Speaker 2: scene in this movie, Marcus headbutting his husband to death
39:25
Speaker 2: and then continuing to go further and further and further
39:28
Speaker 2: and further and further. Is it's a lot and you know, again,
39:31
Speaker 2: this is still a horror movie, but it you know,
39:34
Speaker 2: there is a little bit of comedy to it. And
39:36
Speaker 2: I do think that it's intentional that they give these
39:39
Speaker 2: characters these absurd kind of like popped out eyeballs. I mean,
39:43
Speaker 2: we've seen influencers on TikTok and YouTube who can kind
39:47
Speaker 2: of pop their eyes out of their sockets and they
39:49
Speaker 2: do it to you know, comedic effect, and in this
39:51
Speaker 2: movie it is it's it's gross and it's weird, but
39:54
Speaker 2: it is comedic because watching Benedict Wong run down the
39:57
Speaker 2: street with his arms at his side, with his eyes
40:00
Speaker 2: popped out, you know, kind of with his kind of
40:03
Speaker 2: rictut grin. It is funny to see, like it is
40:06
Speaker 2: also horrifying, but it's kind of like it's darkly comedic.
40:09
Speaker 2: And that's the thing, Like Zach Kreeger's tone in these
40:11
Speaker 2: movies is comedic in nature. I mean, he's you know,
40:15
Speaker 2: obviously this movie and he's talked about it a lot.
40:18
Speaker 2: You know, this movie was in a lot of ways
40:21
Speaker 2: him processing the passing of Trevor Moore, who is one
40:25
Speaker 2: of the founding members of The Whitest Kids, you know,
40:27
Speaker 2: who Zach Kreeger was also a part of. So, you know,
40:31
Speaker 2: Catharsis comes in a lot of ways, and for zach
40:33
Speaker 2: Kreeger came externally in the form of weapons. And you know,
40:37
Speaker 2: he talks about the third act being autobiographical with the
40:40
Speaker 2: alcoholism of it all, but I think, you know, less
40:43
Speaker 2: autobiographical and more just kind of broadly speaking to the
40:46
Speaker 2: idea of when something takes hold in your life, be
40:51
Speaker 2: it addiction, be it external forces that you can't get
40:56
Speaker 2: out from under, which again could be addiction, could be
40:59
Speaker 2: a lot of things. It almost is all encompassing, and
41:02
Speaker 2: it takes over your life entirely, and it starts to
41:05
Speaker 2: poison and become parasitic in your life, and it starts
41:08
Speaker 2: to draw away healthy, positive thoughts and notions away, and
41:14
Speaker 2: it takes over and everything becomes toxic. I mean when
41:18
Speaker 2: you look at something like Alden Ahrenrex's character. So he
41:22
Speaker 2: arrests Austin Abrams for trying to break into his job.
41:26
Speaker 2: He then, after getting stuck by a needle, punches Austin
41:30
Speaker 2: Abrams and then lets him go. And again, you know
41:33
Speaker 2: where we are at this point. His body cam caught
41:37
Speaker 2: all of this, so he tells him, look, you stuck
41:39
Speaker 2: me with a needle by accident, I punched you. You know,
41:42
Speaker 2: neither of these things are okay, And obviously one is
41:45
Speaker 2: worse than the other because he's a police officer. But again,
41:47
Speaker 2: you can kind of get yourself mentally to that point
41:50
Speaker 2: of you know, I've inflicted trauma on you, You've inflicted trauma
41:53
Speaker 2: on me. Let's just kind of call it good and
41:55
Speaker 2: walk away. They get to that point and then Austin
41:58
Speaker 2: Abrams is trying to Austin sensibly do the right thing
42:01
Speaker 2: and let someone you know in the police. Know, hey,
42:04
Speaker 2: this is where the kids are. I've seen the kids.
42:06
Speaker 2: These kids are in this basement. I'm you know, he
42:10
Speaker 2: wants the reward money, and god knows what he'll do
42:12
Speaker 2: with it. He'll probably just you know, again, like the
42:14
Speaker 2: character written rather sympathetically, he might go and use it
42:17
Speaker 2: on drugs, or he might go and get his act together.
42:19
Speaker 2: You would hope the latter, but it will probably be
42:21
Speaker 2: the former. He's ostensibly trying to do the right thing
42:23
Speaker 2: and alden Ehrenreich kind of takes the wrong approach and
42:27
Speaker 2: doesn't listen to it because he thinks that he's trying
42:30
Speaker 2: to come back to the police station to report him
42:33
Speaker 2: for beating him up for you know, police violence and negligence,
42:36
Speaker 2: and that's not what he was doing. He was just
42:37
Speaker 2: trying to cash in on finding the you know, the
42:41
Speaker 2: reward for finding the kids. And so, you know, because
42:43
Speaker 2: alden ehn Reich is you know again like he's is
42:46
Speaker 2: a recovering he's a recovering addict, which you know again,
42:49
Speaker 2: like it would seem that his ability to process things
42:53
Speaker 2: and his ability to be emotionally aware and you know,
42:58
Speaker 2: emotionally well balanced again, like it doesn't. The movie doesn't
43:02
Speaker 2: make a statement on how addiction factors into that. But
43:04
Speaker 2: Alden Aaron Reich is just he's a loose cannon, I mean,
43:08
Speaker 2: and again like addiction or not, like it seems that
43:11
Speaker 2: the addiction feeds into it, Like he makes one bad decision,
43:14
Speaker 2: then makes another bad decision, and then he goes out
43:17
Speaker 2: with Julia Garner making some more bad decisions, which seemingly
43:20
Speaker 2: like by the time the movie ends and he is
43:22
Speaker 2: shot dead by Julia Garner, like you know, it's because
43:26
Speaker 2: of a bunch of bad decisions that he kept making
43:28
Speaker 2: over and over and over again, trauma over and over
43:31
Speaker 2: and over again being inflicted upon him, either externally or
43:35
Speaker 2: on his again, on his own, like he does a
43:38
Speaker 2: lot of it to himself. He can't control himself enough
43:41
Speaker 2: to not punch Austin Abrams. He can't control himself enough
43:43
Speaker 2: to not go out with Julia Garner, like there are
43:46
Speaker 2: ways to as a police officer, make sure you are
43:49
Speaker 2: not you know, like you don't get AIDS or HIV,
43:52
Speaker 2: like getting pricked from a needle like again, like you know,
43:55
Speaker 2: like again, like he he obviously is has every right
43:58
Speaker 2: to be upset, but he inflicts trauma on Austin Abrams
44:01
Speaker 2: and that makes things worse in the process on himself. Like,
44:04
Speaker 2: there's so much of this movie that is just trauma
44:07
Speaker 2: being inflicted upon yourself by others and trauma that you
44:09
Speaker 2: inflict upon others yourself. And you know, I think it
44:13
Speaker 2: is time to talk about Gladys because again, like the
44:15
Speaker 2: third act of the movie does really focus on her character.
44:18
Speaker 2: So Amy Madigan plays a witch in this movie, and
44:21
Speaker 2: Gladys as a witch uses other people's life force to
44:26
Speaker 2: drain them and or use them as weapons through kind
44:30
Speaker 2: of taking a piece of their like hair or belongings
44:34
Speaker 2: and then wrapping it around a branch and then breaking
44:37
Speaker 2: the branch and then that turning them into a weapon.
44:39
Speaker 2: And either you know, you know, she can control them,
44:41
Speaker 2: either to bring them to her or to send them
44:43
Speaker 2: to do her bidding. And she is obviously a malevolent
44:48
Speaker 2: force in the movie in a way that you know,
44:51
Speaker 2: again you don't see in a lot of cinema. I mean,
44:53
Speaker 2: she is a very villainous character because she kills children
44:57
Speaker 2: and she's draining these children of their life force, and
45:00
Speaker 2: you know that is you know, again, inherently, the most
45:03
Speaker 2: evil thing you can do is anything that would be
45:05
Speaker 2: child focused, your child centric, and using seventeen children as
45:09
Speaker 2: essentially batteries to drain your to drain their life force
45:13
Speaker 2: for yourself is pretty intense, and I like the way
45:17
Speaker 2: she's written. I wish that there was again, less of
45:20
Speaker 2: an explanation of what exactly she's doing. I mean there's
45:25
Speaker 2: I mean there's less explanation than I'm probably leading on,
45:28
Speaker 2: But I don't need as much as they gave, because again,
45:31
Speaker 2: like so much of it could have been conveyed with
45:33
Speaker 2: context clues and just the visual language of filmmaking. I
45:38
Speaker 2: don't need everything explained. But again, like I there are
45:42
Speaker 2: these scenes throughout the movie before we kind of understand
45:44
Speaker 2: who she is, where we see her, you know, in
45:47
Speaker 2: the background or in a dream sequence, and she has
45:50
Speaker 2: this wig, this really haunting like red Wig, and she's
45:54
Speaker 2: dressed completely anachronistically to the time that this movie is
45:58
Speaker 2: taking place. The other thing about this movie, it's never
46:00
Speaker 2: really made clear when this movie is taking place. It
46:02
Speaker 2: feels timeless, and so that timelessness makes it feel like
46:06
Speaker 2: a fairy tale, because the best fairy tales have a
46:08
Speaker 2: timeless quality to them that aren't focused on a specific
46:12
Speaker 2: time and place in year, and this movie feels that way.
46:15
Speaker 2: It doesn't feel like it takes place in a specific
46:18
Speaker 2: time and place. It just kind of takes place in
46:20
Speaker 2: any town in America is kind of the way it feels.
46:23
Speaker 2: And this town, you know, is small town America at
46:26
Speaker 2: least is the way it's painted. But the idea that
46:29
Speaker 2: the tenets of small town America are so fragile, and
46:32
Speaker 2: that the framework of small town America is so kind
46:36
Speaker 2: of fragile in the nature of the foundation of it
46:39
Speaker 2: is really interesting because I'm not sure I disagree with
46:42
Speaker 2: the sentiment of the world of the nuclear family and
46:46
Speaker 2: small town America being very kind of tenuous at best.
46:51
Speaker 2: But at the same time, I do live in small
46:53
Speaker 2: town America, and there does seem to be that undercurrent
46:56
Speaker 2: in small town America of kind of passive aggressive talk,
47:00
Speaker 2: and there is some of that in this movie. I mean,
47:02
Speaker 2: the Alden ahn Wright character is unable to be honest
47:05
Speaker 2: with his wife, and in not being honest with his
47:07
Speaker 2: wife about the things that he clearly like needs or wants,
47:12
Speaker 2: he is you know, able to go and be with
47:14
Speaker 2: Julia Garner and be an alcoholic and make bad decisions,
47:18
Speaker 2: and you know, Erode the nuclear family that he and
47:21
Speaker 2: his wife have together. And what's interesting is, you know, again,
47:25
Speaker 2: in any movie without a supernatural character, we would just
47:30
Speaker 2: have parents and you know, cops and people in positions
47:33
Speaker 2: of power having their mental kind of faculties eroded by
47:38
Speaker 2: the grief and trauma and stress of being in this scenario.
47:42
Speaker 2: But in this movie, it's like, no, there's actually a
47:44
Speaker 2: supernatural explanation. This isn't the Atlanta child murders. This is
47:49
Speaker 2: a witch in small town America. And I like that
47:52
Speaker 2: about this movie because again, like it doesn't trivialize the
47:56
Speaker 2: nature of the actual grief and trauma surrounding these things
48:00
Speaker 2: happening in the real world, but it does allow us
48:03
Speaker 2: to go, okay, the stakes are a little less than
48:06
Speaker 2: a man walking into an elementary school and gunning down children.
48:10
Speaker 2: There is a witch in this movie. There is a
48:13
Speaker 2: supernatural explanation, and that supernatural explanation may also have a
48:17
Speaker 2: supernatural kind of solution, a way to fix the problem.
48:22
Speaker 2: And there is a way to fix the problem. We
48:23
Speaker 2: see at the end of the movie. The Gladys character
48:26
Speaker 2: really gets her come upance, and she gets her come
48:28
Speaker 2: upance in a way that, like, you know, I haven't
48:30
Speaker 2: seen in a horror movie in a very long time,
48:32
Speaker 2: Like she gets ripped apart, limb by limb, she gets
48:35
Speaker 2: her top jaw ripped off by children, Like for what
48:38
Speaker 2: she inflicted upon these children, these children inflict upon her
48:41
Speaker 2: in tenfold And it's wild and it's really it reminds
48:45
Speaker 2: me of Colonel Rhodes from Day of the Dead, Like
48:47
Speaker 2: it's very much like joke got it, Like bah help me,
48:50
Speaker 2: Like there's something so visceral about being ripped apart by
48:54
Speaker 2: your bare hands, especially when it's like children, which is
48:56
Speaker 2: even more intense. But you know the amount of trauma
48:59
Speaker 2: and that she inflicted upon them for the rest of
49:02
Speaker 2: their lives, because that's the other thing. When some of
49:03
Speaker 2: those kids come back at the end of the movie,
49:05
Speaker 2: some of them aren't able to talk anymore, and you
49:07
Speaker 2: wonder if that's because you know, like a battery, were
49:10
Speaker 2: those the first you know, were those kids the first
49:12
Speaker 2: ones to make it to the house, which means they
49:14
Speaker 2: were the first ones to be drained by Gladys, which
49:16
Speaker 2: means you know, there's less of their mental faculties left.
49:18
Speaker 2: That would be my explanation, at least head cannon wise,
49:21
Speaker 2: because you know, when you look at what happened to
49:23
Speaker 2: Alex's parents, they're institutionalized. By the end of the movie,
49:26
Speaker 2: they were the ones who were being drained the longest
49:28
Speaker 2: of anyone other than those kids. So I would wager
49:33
Speaker 2: that that's the way the logic of the movie works.
49:37
Speaker 2: And you know, again we don't understand you know, if
49:39
Speaker 2: someone like Benedict Guang had survived, would he have been
49:41
Speaker 2: continue to be drained probably or even someone like you know,
49:45
Speaker 2: Alden Ehrenreich or Austin Abrams, like if those characters hadn't
49:48
Speaker 2: been used for kind of nefarious purposes, you know, so
49:52
Speaker 2: that Gladys could kind of have lackeys under her control,
49:55
Speaker 2: you know, further weapons at her disposal, would you know,
49:58
Speaker 2: would she have drained them completely? And would they have
50:00
Speaker 2: you know, been used as batteries as well? Like when
50:04
Speaker 2: when you're a parasite like Gladys, you don't see people
50:06
Speaker 2: as people. You see people as objects. You see people
50:09
Speaker 2: as means to an end. You see people as a
50:12
Speaker 2: tool for you to use for your own benefit. I mean,
50:16
Speaker 2: Gladys is a you know, case you know, positive proof positive.
50:19
Speaker 2: She is a very good case study of a narcissist.
50:22
Speaker 2: I mean that's the way narcissists treat people. Narcissists treat
50:25
Speaker 2: people as how can how how can you do something
50:27
Speaker 2: for me? What can you do for me? How can
50:29
Speaker 2: you benefit me? What is what? What is there to
50:32
Speaker 2: be stood to be gained from me and you being
50:35
Speaker 2: friends or in a relation, And that for me is again,
50:38
Speaker 2: you know, the trauma in the lives that we live
50:41
Speaker 2: is you know, there are people that are alcoholics that
50:43
Speaker 2: inflict trauma on us. There are people that are narcissists
50:45
Speaker 2: that inflict trauma on us. If you are a narcissist,
50:48
Speaker 2: you're probably inflicting trauma on yourself or the people in
50:51
Speaker 2: your life. Like again, like trauma comes from a lot
50:53
Speaker 2: of places, both externally and internally. And I like that.
50:56
Speaker 2: You know, Zach Krieger with this movie has said, you know,
50:59
Speaker 2: I'm not going to sit here and allow myself to
51:03
Speaker 2: sit in my trauma and grief without a way to
51:06
Speaker 2: process it. And I like that in making Weapons, he's
51:10
Speaker 2: able to externally process his grief of the passing of
51:13
Speaker 2: his friend, and you know, by also getting to externally
51:16
Speaker 2: process some of the grief from his childhood. I mean again,
51:19
Speaker 2: he's talked about the third act of the film being
51:21
Speaker 2: deeply autobiographical, and the third act of the movie is
51:24
Speaker 2: the most intense act in terms of like watching Alex's
51:28
Speaker 2: parents stab themselves in the face with forks, the children
51:32
Speaker 2: ripping the parents, you know, the parent, the you know gladys,
51:35
Speaker 2: they're kind of you know, like which mother you know,
51:39
Speaker 2: fairy godmother or witch godmother. As we're apart at the
51:42
Speaker 2: end of the movie, you know her getting her come up,
51:44
Speaker 2: and it's like that all takes place in the third act.
51:46
Speaker 2: You know, Alden aren Reich and Austin Abrams getting shot
51:49
Speaker 2: and killed. That takes place in the third act. Like,
51:52
Speaker 2: the third act is intense, but the third act also,
51:54
Speaker 2: I think, is you know a lot of again, if
51:56
Speaker 2: you want to talk about processing external trauma, like we
51:59
Speaker 2: get to see these children who represent, you know, children
52:02
Speaker 2: from so many aspects of media, be it kids who
52:05
Speaker 2: have been shot in school shootings, or children who have
52:09
Speaker 2: disappeared because of you know, predators, you know, sexual predators,
52:13
Speaker 2: or child predators kidnapping them. We get to see them
52:15
Speaker 2: get you know, making good on all of the revenge
52:18
Speaker 2: that those children never get to get in real life
52:20
Speaker 2: in cinematic form, watching them rip this woman apart. I
52:24
Speaker 2: mean it is cathartic again, like zach Kreeger's script is cathartic.
52:28
Speaker 2: But then also the end of the film is cathartic.
52:30
Speaker 2: We get to go on a journey with these characters.
52:33
Speaker 2: We get to see Josh Brolin and Julia Garner by
52:35
Speaker 2: the end of the movie really like coming full circle
52:38
Speaker 2: as characters. You know, Josh Brolin, you know, he saves
52:43
Speaker 2: Julia Garner, but then he almost kills her, but then
52:46
Speaker 2: the kids save all of them. Alex saves everybody, you
52:49
Speaker 2: know again, you go back to the Lord of the
52:51
Speaker 2: Rings with you know, the smallest among us makes the
52:54
Speaker 2: biggest impact. You know, Alex ultimately saves the day. Alex
52:57
Speaker 2: is the one who gets revenge on the witch. You
53:00
Speaker 2: know again, he is Hansel pushing the Witch into the oven.
53:04
Speaker 2: There's no Gretel in this movie. If anything, you know,
53:07
Speaker 2: you almost have you know, an adult Hansel and Gretel
53:10
Speaker 2: with Julia Garner and Josh Brolin. And then you know,
53:13
Speaker 2: Alex is you know again, an interesting character. And you
53:17
Speaker 2: can see how zach Kreeger almost Deus ex Machin is
53:20
Speaker 2: Alex because Alex in being in the house the whole
53:23
Speaker 2: time he's the only one who would ever know how
53:25
Speaker 2: to undo what's been done. You know, he's the precocious,
53:30
Speaker 2: observant child. And again you can kind of see how
53:34
Speaker 2: he's having to fend for himself constantly, and he's having
53:37
Speaker 2: to look out for himself and no one else is
53:38
Speaker 2: looking out for him. And the longer the movie goes on,
53:41
Speaker 2: the more self sufficient he has to become to By
53:43
Speaker 2: the end of the movie, he saves the adults who
53:46
Speaker 2: are too busy fighting each other or trying to stop
53:49
Speaker 2: one another from you know, killing the other to do
53:52
Speaker 2: anything about it. And you know, in a lot of ways,
53:54
Speaker 2: Zach Kreeger is probably making good on the what he
53:57
Speaker 2: wishes he could have done when he was a kid.
53:59
Speaker 2: He probably wished, which is there was, you know, some
54:01
Speaker 2: magical twig he could have wrapped somebody's hair around and
54:04
Speaker 2: snapped it and just fixed everything. And look, does killing
54:07
Speaker 2: Gladys in this movie fix everything? Not necessarily, but it
54:11
Speaker 2: fixes a lot. It fixes those you know, those seventeen
54:14
Speaker 2: kids are able to go back to their homes. I
54:16
Speaker 2: don't understand why. In the opening narration it says the
54:19
Speaker 2: kids aren't the kids never return home. I mean, I
54:21
Speaker 2: guess they literally never return home because they're changed. But
54:25
Speaker 2: at the same time, like the kids do return home,
54:28
Speaker 2: I don't understand why they say that they don't in
54:30
Speaker 2: the opening narration, when by the end of the movie
54:32
Speaker 2: the kids do return, except you know, some of them
54:34
Speaker 2: are in a worse state than others. I don't know.
54:37
Speaker 2: I enjoyed this movie. I do think, you know, we're
54:41
Speaker 2: we're getting some bangers for horror movies in the last
54:44
Speaker 2: couple of years, and they really are elevating the genre
54:47
Speaker 2: way beyond anything I thought could be possible. And that's
54:51
Speaker 2: also because again you have Josh Brolin and Julia Garner
54:54
Speaker 2: in these like really you know, fantastic actors looking beyond
54:58
Speaker 2: the expectations of themsel elves and looking at horror is
55:02
Speaker 2: less something that all we have to do this because
55:04
Speaker 2: early on in our career nobody would take us seriously.
55:06
Speaker 2: But as something where Josh Brolin is the executive producer
55:09
Speaker 2: of this film, I mean, you know, he he puts
55:12
Speaker 2: himself in this movie because Pedro Pascal had to, you know,
55:16
Speaker 2: drop out, And I don't understand how Pedro Bescal would
55:18
Speaker 2: have been in this movie in any like, I don't
55:20
Speaker 2: need to see peedromscal and everything, And this movie would
55:22
Speaker 2: have been a lesser film for having him in it,
55:25
Speaker 2: because Josh Brolin's serious and intense energy is really appreciated,
55:31
Speaker 2: and I think it's the For me, it's the best
55:33
Speaker 2: thing in this movie is Josh Brolin, and again, like
55:37
Speaker 2: and how he interacts with everybody. I mean, Josh Brolin
55:39
Speaker 2: and Julia Garner, but Josh Brolin, I think for me,
55:41
Speaker 2: I just one of my favorite actors period. But I just,
55:46
Speaker 2: you know, I just am so glad that horror is
55:49
Speaker 2: finally kind of getting it's it's due. Like, you know,
55:51
Speaker 2: we have Alien Earth right now is on TV. It's
55:54
Speaker 2: you know, the most successful, you know thing that's going
55:57
Speaker 2: on on FX right now, and it's a horror property.
56:00
Speaker 2: It's based on a horror film from the seventies, for
56:03
Speaker 2: fuck's sake, that's still popular now because it resonated with people.
56:07
Speaker 2: You know, Zach Krieger talked about making a sequel to Weapons,
56:10
Speaker 2: and you know I could see that. I mean again, like,
56:12
Speaker 2: this movie clearly resonated with people in a way that
56:14
Speaker 2: I'm not saying Barbarian didn't, But I think this movie
56:17
Speaker 2: just there's something about this movie that hit more people
56:21
Speaker 2: the right way, and in not only the right way,
56:24
Speaker 2: but the way that I think Zach Kreeger really wanted
56:26
Speaker 2: it to hit them. This movie hit them. And I
56:29
Speaker 2: think it's the kids of it all. I think it's
56:31
Speaker 2: the parents. I think because you have the parents perspective,
56:34
Speaker 2: because you have the kids perspective, that split perspective, because
56:38
Speaker 2: we get a perspective that again, we get a lot
56:40
Speaker 2: of perspectives.
56:41
Speaker 3: In this movie.
56:42
Speaker 2: I really appreciate that because again, like for me, I
56:46
Speaker 2: want to know why characters tick, and I want to
56:49
Speaker 2: know why Alex is the way that he is in
56:52
Speaker 2: a way that makes sense that doesn't over explain every
56:55
Speaker 2: and you know, narration is an easy way to do that.
56:58
Speaker 2: And when it's done well, you know, you have a
57:00
Speaker 2: show like Dexter where the whole show really works because
57:04
Speaker 2: we get to know what's in Dexter's head, or something
57:06
Speaker 2: like The House that Jack Built, where you know, again
57:08
Speaker 2: we get to know what's going on in the character's head.
57:11
Speaker 2: That works better than just you know, having a long
57:14
Speaker 2: legs scene where we're having a character talk to the
57:16
Speaker 2: audience directly and regurgitate the again, you know what this
57:20
Speaker 2: is what you've been seeing for the last hour like yeah,
57:22
Speaker 2: and now we're just gonna explain it, like yeah, okay, fine,
57:26
Speaker 2: this way of telling that story, I find it to
57:29
Speaker 2: be a lot more successful, and you know, just not
57:33
Speaker 2: beating the audience over the head and Weapons is as
57:37
Speaker 2: guilty of it as any of these kind of horror
57:39
Speaker 2: movies have been. But I think Weapons does a lot
57:42
Speaker 2: more right, I mean even more so than Long Legs.
57:45
Speaker 2: Like as much as I liked Long Legs, which I
57:47
Speaker 2: enjoyed Long Legs a lot, I think this movie has
57:49
Speaker 2: a lot no pun intended Longer Legs than Long Legs
57:52
Speaker 2: will in terms of making an impact broadly and with
57:56
Speaker 2: with the horror community and with a larger audience. I
57:58
Speaker 2: think this movie got more people through the door then
58:02
Speaker 2: Long Legs did. And I think that this movie's marketing
58:05
Speaker 2: was more successful than Long Legs because I think the
58:07
Speaker 2: movie that was advertised is the movie that people saw,
58:09
Speaker 2: and I think Long Legs was misadvertised, which can kill
58:12
Speaker 2: a movie. And I think Long Legs suffered tremendously from misadvertising.
58:16
Speaker 2: This movie did not. The expectations with this movie were
58:18
Speaker 2: set correctly and this movie executed in it every way possible.
58:23
Speaker 2: And again the amount of money that this movie has made,
58:26
Speaker 2: I think is it speaks volumes to that, so I
58:30
Speaker 2: you know, I think for me, Weapons is a movie
58:32
Speaker 2: that in a lot of ways is Barbarian, but with
58:37
Speaker 2: a second and third pass having been done, there's still
58:39
Speaker 2: a lot of the themes of Barbarian, of generational trauma
58:42
Speaker 2: being put on you by other people. What does trauma
58:45
Speaker 2: look like? How does trauma affect us in the short term,
58:48
Speaker 2: in the long term. I think it's all here in
58:51
Speaker 2: Weapons like it was in Barbarian. I just think in
58:53
Speaker 2: this movie, it's more interesting. I think what we're talking
58:56
Speaker 2: about is more interesting, and the conversation we're having is
58:59
Speaker 2: just a little bit more engaging. And I want to
59:02
Speaker 2: have engage in conversations with filmmakers through their film, through
59:06
Speaker 2: the medium that they want to have engage in conversations
59:08
Speaker 2: with the audience, which is film. I mean, we can
59:10
Speaker 2: talk to filmmakers. We used to do that all the
59:12
Speaker 2: time on the Culture Cast. My friend Mike White and
59:14
Speaker 2: co collaborator on co founder in weirding Way Media. He
59:17
Speaker 2: talks to filmmakers all the time. Like to talk to
59:20
Speaker 2: them directly is one thing, But when you're watching a
59:22
Speaker 2: film and especially one where it's written and directed by
59:25
Speaker 2: the same person. You're having a conversation directly with the filmmaker,
59:29
Speaker 2: and what better way to do it than with a
59:32
Speaker 2: filmmaker who has something interesting to say, And I think
59:34
Speaker 2: Zach Krieger does have something interesting to say. I think
59:37
Speaker 2: for me in a lot of ways, I'm still waiting
59:40
Speaker 2: to see the further refinement of that message without having
59:44
Speaker 2: to lay it all out in the third act. And
59:46
Speaker 2: I think maybe his next film will do that, but
59:49
Speaker 2: you know, maybe it won't, and it'll still be a
59:51
Speaker 2: further refinement of this with that kind of third act reveal,
59:55
Speaker 2: which I would still be okay with because his tone
59:58
Speaker 2: resonates with me. I think is idea of how to
1:00:02
Speaker 2: be external with your Catharsis matters to me as well
1:00:06
Speaker 2: and means a lot to me. And you know, as
1:00:08
Speaker 2: someone who struggles with mental health, which you know it's
1:00:10
Speaker 2: not an addiction, but it does tear at the fiber
1:00:14
Speaker 2: of your being and weaken your ability to operate on
1:00:17
Speaker 2: a daily basis in a substantive way the way addiction
1:00:22
Speaker 2: seemingly does, at least when people talk about it. You know,
1:00:25
Speaker 2: it's just another thing that makes you vulnerable and vulnerability especially.
1:00:30
Speaker 2: You know, it's one thing to be honest about being vulnerable.
1:00:33
Speaker 2: It's another thing to struggle with being vulnerable, and vulnerability,
1:00:37
Speaker 2: you know, comes in a lot of forms. And to
1:00:39
Speaker 2: open up and be honest with people about what you're
1:00:42
Speaker 2: struggling with, be it addiction, be it mental health, is
1:00:45
Speaker 2: to show vulnerability. And you know, Zach Kreeger, you know,
1:00:48
Speaker 2: again opens up that you know, this movie is him
1:00:50
Speaker 2: externalizing his grief. That is not, you know, something you're
1:00:53
Speaker 2: seeing a lot of filmmakers saying on a daily basis
1:00:55
Speaker 2: in Hollywood that this is, you know, my grief being externalized.
1:00:58
Speaker 2: And you know, I lost my friend, and so I
1:01:00
Speaker 2: just started writing like that's. I appreciate that honesty from
1:01:04
Speaker 2: him as a filmmaker because I you know, that honesty
1:01:08
Speaker 2: is apparent in his you know, in his end product,
1:01:13
Speaker 2: in the films that he's making, and I don't foresee
1:01:15
Speaker 2: him changing the way he does things anytime soon. Similarly
1:01:19
Speaker 2: to Jordan Peel and these other directors, like they are
1:01:22
Speaker 2: they are part and parcel with the film that they're making,
1:01:25
Speaker 2: and you know, I appreciate that, and I appreciate someone
1:01:28
Speaker 2: who has something to say about addiction and trauma and grief.
1:01:31
Speaker 2: And if you have any interest in checking this movie out,
1:01:35
Speaker 2: if you're on the fence, I would say give it
1:01:37
Speaker 2: a watch, give it a look horror. If horror is
1:01:40
Speaker 2: not your strong suit, it's not as much of a
1:01:44
Speaker 2: horror movie as Barbarian was. There are horror horrific moments
1:01:48
Speaker 2: in this film. But I think in this day and age,
1:01:50
Speaker 2: like not watching something because it might scare you, Like
1:01:53
Speaker 2: the real world is scary enough. This is a kind
1:01:56
Speaker 2: of horror that you can experience in the safety of
1:01:59
Speaker 2: your own home, in the kind of sanctity of your
1:02:02
Speaker 2: own home, and it's just a screen. Enjoy it for
1:02:04
Speaker 2: the genre that it is, not because it's trying to
1:02:06
Speaker 2: scare you. And look, if the movie does scare you,
1:02:08
Speaker 2: that's also kind of the intention to be fair. So
1:02:12
Speaker 2: I don't know what we're gonna be talking about on
1:02:13
Speaker 2: the next episode of the Culture Cast. Thank you for
1:02:15
Speaker 2: tuning in, Thank you for listening to me for the
1:02:17
Speaker 2: last hour, talk about weapons. If you've enjoyed this like,
1:02:20
Speaker 2: rate and review the show on iTunes, or leave me
1:02:23
Speaker 2: a comment on Spotify, or engage with me over at
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Speaker 2: the Patreon Patreon dot com slash Culturecast. That is where
1:02:29
Speaker 2: you can go to support the show financially, and you
1:02:32
Speaker 2: should because times are hard and you know, we got
1:02:34
Speaker 2: to move the needle somehow. And yeah, head on over
1:02:37
Speaker 2: to Weirdingwaymedia dot com to check out all the other
1:02:40
Speaker 2: shows that I'm on, including this one, including Scary Stories
1:02:44
Speaker 2: We Tell which is on hiatus right now, including The
1:02:47
Speaker 2: Shabby Detective, and including the Culchac tapes. So many things,
1:02:50
Speaker 2: so many great things that you could be checking out
1:02:52
Speaker 2: over at weirdowaymedia dot com and you should, so thank
1:02:56
Speaker 2: you as always for listening and I.
1:02:58
Speaker 3: Will catch you on the next episode.
1:03:03
Speaker 1: Bottom still stoo