Folks who haven’t seen it yet, peering in through the internet redaction boxes.

How do you discuss a movie without ruining it when its greatest pleasure is the element of surprise? Maybe you just…don’t?

I never saw the trailer for writer/director Zach Cregger’s 2022 film Barbarian, let alone read a single review that divulged any details beyond its first ten minutes: somehow two strangers end up renting the same AirBnb at the same time. Without the title and its retro grindhouse posters, that premise could fit a basic rom-com, an “I was here FIRST” death-duel, a slow lead-in to mocking the ubiquity of computer glitches today, or the amazing true story of how those two people went on to found a world-changing coffeehouse. With each unexpected pivot Cregger tweaks the audience’s perceptions as the narrative focus lets each character’s perspective through the gate one at a time. Eventually we give up second-guessing him and let events roller-coast where they will until we’re finally pulled back far enough to grasp the big picture’s terrifying enormity. My son watched it first and recommended it to me in much the same way critics wrote about it: by insisting it’s best going in knowing as very little as possible. Ignorance begets a disturbing sort of bliss.

Cregger pulls off the same clever stunt with Weapons, deftly juggling a larger cast but once again parceling out details in measured doses, occasionally reverting back to earlier timeline moments, and letting everyone take turns sharing — not exactly Rashomon-style per se, but with each testimony limited in scope until the townspeople’s lives intersect, collide and detonate. Once again every new revelation alters our reality and theirs, sometimes switches genres, and adds another spoiler to the Need-to-Know-Basis list of top secrets.

So what can we describe safely? Once upon a time in the medium-sized Pennsylvania town of Maybrook (cozily middle-class with a downtown large enough to have four-lane streets), seventeen kids in the same third-grade class all get up in the middle of the night at the exact same minute, silently run out their front doors in their pajamas with their arms trailing behind them like rocket fins, and vanish. The parents are in an uproar, led by Josh Brolin as the angriest and savviest of them all, a rare combination in any given tale poised to descend into mob vengeance. He demands answers from their teacher, Julia Garner (keeping busy after Wolf Man and last month’s Fantastic Four), but she seems as befuddled everyone else. Nor can anyone figure out why
one student (Cary Christopher, who has a recurring role on Days of Our Lives as Stefano DiMera’s grandson Thomas) was spared the event and showed up alone for class the next morning.

The trailers covered all that, which Cregger speeds through in the rather tidy first ten minutes. From there the viewer grapples with the urge to solve the mystery for the characters, as so much of pop culture has trained us to do. We’ve come to treat films and TV shows as one-on-one battles of wits, pitting us against filmmakers to see who can get to the final battle or the season finale first. He could’ve skipped the novelty of trickery and made a straightfoward B-movie, but the intricate puzzle-box design keeps us hooked, has us whipping out our metaphorical magnifying glasses to scour each new scene and frame for clues that’ll unlock everything. And once again the day will be saved by You, The Viewers at Home!

With virtually nothing to go on, we’re already brainstorming the list of possibilities: did the kids plan this and go convene in a faraway clubhouse? Did a sinister Pied Piper lure them all into his belly? Is it an organized protest against their malnutritious school lunches? Is there a vampire hypnotist? Was there a launch party for Borderlands 4 at midnight PDT? Is it aliens? Is it lupus? Occasionally Cregger will release a clue here and there, but this isn’t a fair whodunit with a detective reading us the answer key to us at the end and patting us on the head for not getting suckered by his sleight-of-hand.

As the cameras shift from eerie sideways glides to nightmarish shakes and back again, as we follow along behind each actor in Phil Abraham Mad Men-style back-of-head shots, Cregger revels in our frustrations at not knowing, tantalizes us with red herrings and sharp shocks, and preys on our yearning for the joy of discovery. But we’re kidding ourselves — what awaits us at the labyrinth’s center is the horror of knowing. It isn’t exactly a reward, though the climax is a breathtaking eruption of untamed fury, a headlong rush of how did they DO that? worth the tiptoeing trek along Cregger’s tangled web.

None of this would work if the main characters weren’t worth getting attached to. Brolin ruggedly leads the charge for all parents suffering the anguish of helplessness over their children’s fates (here and in real-life catastrophes) without careening into stereotypical, pigheaded stubbornness. Garner suffers the slings and arrows of a paranoid populace that is so sure she must be guilty of something somehow (proving exactly why courts reject “we just know” as a prosecutorial stance) and eventually stands her ground. Everyone in the ensemble commits to their parts to the Nth degree, though some viewers might be disappointed Cregger gives in to a tired modern horror trope, which I’m surprised hasn’t come up in angry articles so far. Then again, it is a spoiler.

If you can’t help analyzing the trailers to death before you walk into Weapons, I’d strongly advise you forget some of their more jarring non sequitur phantasmagoria and trust Cregger’s process. He leaves a few questions to dangle (why was that one character loitering in the forest?), but all the important ones are answered as satisfyingly as they need to be. Well, maybe more satisfying to the viewer than to some of the bereaved. Knowing might be half the battle, but that’s cold comfort to the battle’s survivors.

…

Meanwhile in the customary MCC film breakdowns:

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: Marvel’s Wong himself, Benedict Wong is the school principal. Alden Ehrenreich (last seen in Marvel’s Ironheart) is a beat cop. King of the Hill‘s Toby Huss is his captain. Austin Abrams, who vexed Clooney and Pitt in Wolfs, is slightly tamer here but no more drug-free.

’80s Concerned Significant Other Amy Madigan (Uncle Buck, Field of Dreams, The Dark Half) enters fashionably late as an older relative. Two players from Barbarian drop by for cameos, including Cregger’s own wife Sara Paxton, the Kate Siegel to his Mike Flanagan.

How about those end credits? No, there’s no scene after the Weapons end credits, but if you liked the angular credits of The Brutalist, you’ll love how this one’s credits scroll upward at two different angles, toward each other and yet without colliding. Near the end, folks named in the Special Thanks section include Bill Hader and the Seven team of David Fincher and Andrew Kevin Walker, which would’ve been an understandable shout-out at the end of Barbarian.