Weapons - "... And They Never Came Back."

SPOILERS

It seems like (financially and/or critically) successful “elevated” horror movies face a bit more scrutiny from audiences. For instance, the latest Final Destination (Bloodlines) seems to be accepted as a good, gory time, and most people enjoy it without digging into the weeds of the logic of the film (for the record, I enjoyed it with my brain off like most viewers). But when something like Weapons comes out, you get countless YouTube analysis videos and Reddit threads. Many of these are effusive or just a little clickbaity (“Weapons Ending Explained!”), but others are more along the lines of “Did I watch the same movie as everyone else? Because that was garbage.” 

First off, Weapons and other horror movies getting this treatment because they are “elevated” is bullshit. Yes, there are different types of horror films, but that doesn’t mean some are immune to criticism while others need to be picked apart. Yes, a film like Weapons lends itself to analysis more than a slasher sequel does, but that doesn’t mean it can’t just be a good time, too. 

Personally, I loved Weapons, and I thought it was a fun movie. Sure, there were traditionally creepy moments (Julia Garner getting her hair cut while sleeping in her car comes to mind), but a lot of it was darkly funny (young Han Solo getting his face peeled) or regular funny (seventeen screaming children bursting through multiple houses like an army of Kool-Aid men). It kept me absolutely engaged throughout, and I found the multiple POVs interesting and often humorous, especially when they got shorter and borderline redundant. 

Whenever I love a movie, I immediately start checking out the negative reactions (I don’t read full reviews until I write my own piece, but I’ll read blurbs and short Letterboxd entries). I do this because I like to see what didn’t work for others but also because, and this says more about me than it does any movie I’m writing about, if I love a movie I think there must be something wrong with it. Secretly, this movie I love must suck, so I’m going to find out why. That’s just a bit of impostor syndrome shit that happens to me as a sorta critic, but it usually wears off. If it doesn’t wear off, then I start to consider that I might be wrong about a movie, but if it does wear off, I embrace my love of the film.

All my stupid insecurities out of the way, I realized that Weapons worked for me because it wasn’t trying to be elevated. An elevated film would probably never reveal what happened to the children, and the point of them being missing would be the community's reaction to the situation. Vigilantism would pop up, marriages would fall apart, the true “Weapons” would be revealed, blah blah blah. (For the record, there’s nothing wrong with that premise, as a movie like Prisoners kind of does that, and I love that movie.) There are beginnings of that in Weapons with the community’s reaction to Garner and Josh Brolin’s character. We get scenes of Garner being frightened at home, and we see Brolin as a broken man, ignoring his wife and work in his grief. But before the film can devolve into full on misery, it’s revealed that some witchcraft shit is going on, and a goofy old lady is behind it all.

At first, I was kind of disappointed in that reveal. It’s just a witch wanting to live longer? Beyond the witch stuff, I was disappointed that the missing children were found at all. But looking back at writer/director Zack Cregger’s previous film (Barbarian, which I also loved), it turns out he’s a dude that likes to tell you most of the story. As someone used to things not being spelled out in critically acclaimed horror films, I realized it was refreshing to be given so many answers, and from multiple viewpoints.

The reveal makes Weapons a less scary film (aside from a few moments, I didn’t find it all that scary in a traditional way), but it’s a more entertaining one, for sure. The scariest, or at least most disturbing element, is Alex having to live and take care of his zombified parents and the effect zombification has on them and the children. The darkest aspect of the film is the line, “every kid woke up, got out of bed, walked downstairs, and into the dark, and they never came back.” While watching it, the reveal of the children in the basement made me think that line was bullshit. But when it’s later revealed that they are still at least partially zombified, I realized they didn’t truly come back, making that line much more disturbing. 

So how the fuck can I say this is funny? One minute I’m laughing at the sight of the children storming through houses and ripping Gladys apart, and then I’m hit with the reveal of their mental state afterwards. That juxtaposition shouldn’t work, or at least I should consider the death of Gladys as unintentional comedy. But I don’t buy that the laughs in this movie are unintentional. First off, the junkie dude (James, but I’m going to keep calling him “junkie dude”) part of the movie is a comedy, through and through, and so is young Han Solo’s POV. So the humor is there. With that possibility gone, all I can chalk it up to is this is a true dark comedy. 

A dark comedy about missing children might seem insensitive, but I think that says more about our society than any possible interpretations of this movie. I enjoyed this movie almost completely on the surface level, but others have wanted to dig deeper (you know, because of the elevation of it all). I’ve seen that it’s a commentary on gun violence, because of the focus on the empty classroom and the giant gun Brolin sees in a dream. Cregger denies any intention there, but that doesn’t matter because once a movie is made the interpretation is up to the viewer, not the filmmaker. I saw the giant gun as a metaphor for the children becoming the titular weapons, but that’s just me. As for the empty classroom part of it, that’s America for you. We just assume a film about kids missing from a classroom is about gun violence because we’re so fucking used to school shootings. Unfortunately, large groups of children being killed are a “normal” part of American life. That’s why you can make a dark comedy about it; it’s commonplace. Once again, that says a lot more about us as a society than this film does. 

None of this is to say negative reactions to this film are “wrong” or “missed the point.” Unless you flat out misheard a line or didn’t notice something onscreen, your opinion is valid. I’m not writing this to try to convince anyone who hated it to love it; I just wanted to work through why I loved it. 

Random Thoughts

The seven hot dogs stuff is great, and I love that it’s been revealed to be a tribute to Trevor Moore (Cregger’s castmate from The Whitest Kids U’Know who died in 2021).

The only thing I thought was silly about the hot dog reaction online was that some people were wondering who was getting four hot dogs to the other’s three, but I think it’s pretty fucking obvious that Wong planned on eating all seven, and his husband seemed fine with it.

Toby Huss was great in this. He’s perfect for someone who’s meant to be a little funny, but can look downright dangerous (that look he gives Han Solo, knowing Solo cheated on his daughter) when necessary.

Han Solo was great as Cregger’s tribute (ripoff?) of John C. Reilly’s cop from Magnolia. Cregger has acknowledged the connections to Magnolia, but it still feels a little too obvious. Oh well, I still enjoyed it, and he really wasn’t like Reilly’s character aside from not being a great cop and having a mustache. He’s pretty much a complete scumbag, whereas Reilly seems like a well-intentioned guy.

I’m a soup guy, and this movie proves it. I should be grossed out by the end of this (I’m kind of surprised Campbell’s signed off on this product placement), but it just made me want to eat soup. 

Speaking of the soup…so Alex had to feed everyone, but what about the end result of eating? Was he putting diapers on everyone, even his parents? Or were they all just shitting and pissing themselves for days? Either scenario is possibly the most disturbing part of the movie. Honestly, the lack of acknowledgement of these zombies needing to use the bathroom is the weakest element of the film. Just show one of them going to the bathroom at some point or have Gladys acknowledge it in some way. Am I the only one hung up on this?

It definitely seems like the cops should have done the legwork Brolin did on the route the kids’ took, but if they have a bunch of young Han Solo dirtbags working there, I can see how it slipped through the cracks. 

And with Ring cameras factoring into the plot, it seems kind of fucked up that the children didn’t show up on any other Ring cameras after they left, making it easier to show that they went to Alex’s house. 

But then again, his house was searched. So I guess that explains it. This wasn’t a story told from the detectives’ point of view, so that’s why I can write off stuff like this. 

It’s plenty disturbing as is, but I think all those fork stabs to the face would have bloodied up Alex’s parents more than it did. 

Alex’s story is the true horror element of the film. The idea of having to go through that at that age is so disturbing. 

As a parent, I’m glad this wasn’t focused too much on parents being miserable about missing children because I’ve written about too many movies from the perspective of a parent (I’m trying to lay off that angle).

No Country for Old Men - "What You Got Ain't Nothing New."

I was a guest on my friend Robie Malcomson’s podcast, Knowing You Know Nothing, (click the link for the episode) this week to discuss No Country for Old Men. As usual, to prepare for the podcast I wrote an article before we recorded. So this article will be a bit more rambling than usual since it’s kind of serving as my notes for the podcast. But I think most of my stuff is rambling, so this article is probably just like all the rest...but with a bonus podcast you can check out.

“What You Got Ain’t Nothing New.”

No Country for Old Men is mainly about an aging lawman struggling to accept what the world has become. Of course, it’s not just people in law enforcement that struggle with the changing world; it’s all of us. For me, I remember it happening pretty early in a sports-related way. Whenever I went from one level to the next (like junior high to high school), I would think, “Man, they have it so much better than we had it.” It was essentially the “back in my day” bullshit we all grow up hearing. 

Things do change over time, but that doesn’t mean they are worse. If I checked game tape on basketball over the past few decades, the style of the play would be different, but not worse. A lot of this type of complaining is technology-based. As people age, they tend to prefer the more comfortable method they use for communicating and whatnot, so they’ll talk about the “simpler” times before everyone had a phone in their pocket.

Ed Tom in No Country certainly yearns for the simpler days of the past, as the film begins with his narration about how some sheriff’s didn’t even pack a gun. In his mind, the past was more peaceful, but now, with the drugs and everything, the world has become much more violent and confusing. It’s not until the end of the film that Ed Tom realizes that it’s not so much the world that has changed; it’s him. His uncle, Ellis, sums it up far better than I can: “What you got ain’t nothing new. This country’s hard on people. Can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”

Ed Tom finishes the film by recounting a dream he had about his long-dead father passing him on horseback and knowing that his father would be waiting for him ahead. I always thought that dream meant Ed Tom had accepted that he had aged beyond this world and felt comforted knowing that his father had gone through the same thing and would be waiting for him. His final line, “Then I woke up,” signifies that he’s at least aware of his situation now and has found a little peace in a hard world.

Accepting the chaos and Chigurhs of the world is something everyone throughout time could benefit from. When I was outlining this article, I thought I would focus on how crazy the world is right now and write about how this film can help someone realize that the world has always been crazy and chaotic. I still believe that, but I think focusing on that would defeat the point. It would assume that the world now is more chaotic than it’s ever been, and while that might seem like it’s the case, I can think of plenty of other historical events/time periods that would make the world feel less certain than it is today (the Holocaust, slavery, 9/11, JFK assassination, the Civil War, etc.). And I find it silly and disrespectful to try to compare horrible events to see which one is worse. 

Yes, learning the same lesson that Ed Tom learns in this film would be beneficial for a lot of people right now, but it would also be beneficial for a lot of people at any time in history. We all need to accept the title of the film and realize that this is not a country, or world, for old people. There are children growing up right now (my own two among them) that don’t see this current world as chaotic or different, even. This is just the world to them because this world is for them. Talk to them in twenty to thirty years, though, and they’ll probably tell you about how this chaotic world of ours right now is much simpler than the bullshit happening to their world in the future. And if I’m there to talk to them about it, I’ll just remind them of the lesson I took away from this movie: the world may change a bit, but people have and will always suck.

The Terminator, as Directed by the Coen Brothers.

It really hit me watching No Country this time how similar it is to The Terminator. The easy comparison is that Chigurh is machine-like and lethal like the Terminator and Llewelyn is the scrappy Kyle Reese, doing all he can survive.

There are certainly plenty of thematic differences between the films, but the long segments of tense cat-and-mouse interactions along with the scenes of preparation and self-surgery are spot-on Terminator. It makes for an interesting watch, seeing how the Coens would’ve made The Terminator.

As far as Chigurh as the Terminator goes, I actually think he’s a bit scarier because of his obsession with chance. It’s one thing to be a machine on a mission, but his strange coin flip game is a cruel addition. But then again, death in general is the same. Although I’ve never thought of Chigurh as a simple representative of death, but more as a personification of the brutal chaos of the world. In that way, Chigurh is more realistic. I can imagine someone like him existing, whereas the Terminator is more of a science fiction fantasy.

It’s pretty obvious, and plenty of others have made this comparison (as evidenced by the video below), but it stuck out to me a bit more this time for some reason.

Why Do I Own This?

I own almost every Coen Brothers movie (except Buster Scruggs [which seems silly to own since it’s a Netflix movie] and Hail, Caesar!, which has not grown on me enough yet. I used to be a completionist, which is why I own Intolerable Cruelty. All that written, I’d own this no matter who the filmmakers were. I believe this is easily in the top ten of the past twenty years.

Random Thoughts

I’ve seen this movie at least a dozen times, and this is the first time I noticed that Llewelyn’s first line is, “You hold still,” which is very similar to what Chigurh says to the unfortunate motorist in the previous scene. One is killing a man, the other is killing an animal. I suppose this film is asking if there’s a difference.

Gas station and grocery store scenes in period films always bother me because they rarely get the product packaging right. In this case, the Jack Link’s beef jerky in the background should not be there since the movie takes place in 1980 and Jack Link’s wasn’t founded until 1986. Not to mention that there’s no way the packaging looked like that in 1986. It’s a pet peeve that I wish I could ignore. Who else would let beef jerky take them out of such an amazing scene?

“Age will flatten a man.”

I love how the trailer park office lady says, “Did you not hear me?”

“You telling me he shot this boy in the head then went digging around in there with a pocketknife?”

“Sir, I don’t want to picture that.”

“I don’t either.”

Hotel clerk, incredulous: “That’s got two double beds!”

This is a movie largely comprised of scenes of preparation and tension. Come to think of it, that’s another reason why this movie reminds me of The Terminator more and more each time I watch it.

It’s also an all-time Coen Brothers film in regards to scenes with people working behind counters and desks.

“Is Carson Wells there?”

“Not in the sense that you mean.”

“They torture them first. Not sure why. Maybe the television set was broken.”

“But that’s what it took, you notice, to get someone’s attention. Digging graves in the backyard didn’t bring any.”

“Oh. That’s all right. I laugh myself sometimes. Ain’t a whole lot else you can do.”

“It’s certainly true that it’s a story.”

At first, I was annoyed that Llewelyn died off screen. Now I see that the shift in narrative focus is part of the point. People die and the focus drifts to the next person.

I was confused for a while about where exactly Chigurh is when Ed Tom goes back to the hotel. But you can see briefly that the lock to the next room has been shot out, as well. So I believe he’s waiting in the next hotel room and takes off while Ed Tom is looking through Llewelyn’s room.

“I always thought that when I got older, God would come into my life.” I’m not so certain now, but there was a time when I just thought older people were religious because they were old, and that’s what you do when you’re old, and that when I got older I would become much more religious. I’m not exactly old, so perhaps this will still be the case when/if I’m elderly.

The “vanity” line from Uncle Ellis really speaks to me. The idea that it’s vain to assume the world is at its worst during your lifetime is something I use to comfort myself from time to time. When I was little, I used to be very worried about the end of the world (the impending year 2000 was a point of concern for me for a while). Eventually, I came to the realization that this current generation of humanity is nothing special, so why should the world end while we’re here? It’s a bit of a messed up way to comfort yourself, sure, but it works for me. Why would the world end while we’re here? We suck too much for the apocalypse. An apocalypse would be wasted on us!

When I watched this in the theaters the first time, some dido behind me said, “Are you serious?” at the end. Yeah, they’re serious, you fucking moron. Look at the title. It’s called No Country for Old Men, not The Coen Brothers Made a Terminator Movie and That’s All. I hate to claim that someone doesn’t “get” something, but if you watched this movie and came away disappointed by the end, which encapsulates what the movie is actually about, then...you didn’t get it.

Here are a couple paragraphs of notes that didn’t make the cut for the first section, but I didn’t want to just delete them:

This is why we die. If we live too long, this world changes too much for us to handle. It happens sooner for some people. For simple folk like myself, I’m able to step away from it mentally and focus on other things, like parenting, video games, movies, work, etc. Life sometimes seems like one big distraction from the world.

But I don’t believe humans have become worse over time. We just know more things now. I imagine plenty of fucked up terrible shit happened even back in the cave dwelling days of humanity. But all we have to go by are some cave paintings of deer and shit. Now, we can just go back through someone’s Twitter history to find out how big of a piece of shit they are. We’ve always been awful, now we’re just better at letting everyone know, and, worse, a lot of people are proud of it.

..

"Once Upon a Time...Inherent Vice."

*As always, I write these articles under the assumption that you’ve seen the film, so...SPOILERS. (This also applies to Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood.)

I’m still sticking with my current monthly plan of Van Damme, Oedekerk, and western, but getting a chance to see Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood inspired me a bit. That’s why I went ahead and wrote a review of that, but it also made me want to revisit Inherent Vice. Basically, I wanted to rewatch Once Upon, but that wasn’t a possibility for me, so I went with the film it most reminded me of with Inherent Vice. 

Once Upon a Time...Inherent Vice

There are some obvious connections between these two films (the setting, the Manson references, the comedic tone, etc.), but the main connection I found was both films’ theme dealing with the end of an era. It’s as if Inherent Vice’s world is what Tarantino wanted to prevent by changing history at the end of his fairy tale. That’s probably why Once is a much lighter, funnier film than Inherent Vice. 

In Inherent Vice, the overall point (as far as I’m concerned, anyway) was the death of the carefree ‘60s and the birth of the paranoid ‘70s. This is evidenced by the general tone, especially the music, of the film, but it’s pretty obvious with the plot, when you can follow it, that is. You see the co-opting of the hippie movement (Bigfoot playing a hippie in a commercial, Owen Wilson being planted within the community by a government agency), and the general fear of hippies and drug users because of Charles Manson (when the cop pulls over Doc with Dr. Blatnoyd, Japonica, and Denis he lists all the things they’re on the lookout for and Denis even namedrops Manson). You get the sense that within Doc’s own life things were simpler when he was with Shasta, but now things have changed and it seems like everything is controlled by sinister forces. So even when they seem to end up together at the end, Doc is still looking in the mirror behind him, as if someone might be following him. Things will never be the same. 

This is what Tarantino laments in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. He’s more specifically concerned with Hollywood (hence, the title) than the general culture, but it’s still about how the Manson murders helped put an end to a carefree era. You get the sense of foreboding with Once Upon anytime you see the Manson women (hitchhiking, dumpster diving, etc.), and it comes to the forefront when Cliff ends up at the ranch, in an amazingly tense, creepy sequence. Overall, things are kept fairly light because Tarantino’s film is a fairy tale, not only for the main characters of Rick and Cliff, but for all of Hollywood, as well. Tarantino’s film posits that stopping Manson’s followers could let that world stay the same. You could argue that stopping Manson’s followers would not have stopped the change in our culture, but it is a fairy tale, so in that world maybe it could have. 

This is why I think Inherent Vice and Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood make a great double feature. And it doesn’t matter what order you watch them in. If you go with Vice first, you see a more historically accurate change in the culture, and if you follow that with Once Upon, you get to what things were like before and how it could have been avoided. I think it works better with Hollywood first, though. In that order, you get to see this world and its alternate history, and Inherent Vice becomes this darker sequel about what would have happened if things went differently at the end of Hollywood. Either way, both films create a world I wouldn’t mind spending an afternoon in.

It’s weird feeling nostalgic for an era I never experienced.

Feeling nostalgic for the world of either film is strange since I wasn’t alive during this time. It’s nothing new to want to live in a fictional world that I don’t personally identify with (like, say, wanting to live in the world of Star Wars even if I would have probably just been a moisture farmer or nerf herder…), but to feel a bit of nostalgia for a real time period I didn’t experience is a strange feeling because it’s a world I almost experienced. 

I was born in 1984, so most of my childhood memories are late ‘80s/early ‘90s. To me, those were carefree times, but I’m sure they weren’t to adults who had grown up in the ‘50s and 60’s. So I think this feeling that the world changed because of one or more events is something that happens to every generation. For me, it’s 9/11. But that also happened during my senior year of high school, a common time for people to start thinking more about the world instead of their own silly lives. 

My generation is unique, however, in that we will be the last people to remember a time of landline phones, no internet (at least no internet in its current ubiquitous form[fun fact: Pynchon included a subplot about the beginnings of the internet in the book, so even that was covered to a degree]), no DVR, etc. I still remember a time when driving around was a thing, and people had to track each other down to hang out and make plans. We had to look things up the hard way, and the world could be more interesting and mysterious due to our lack of information. Now, with information both real and fake being presented at a nonstop rate, it’s easy to look back to my childhood, or an era like the ‘60s, and think, “Man, I wish things were like that again.” This is all ignoring the common issues with nostalgia, by the way, like the fact that no time period is ever as great or simple as you remember it, and odds are it was a terrible time period for entire groups of people different than yourself. But at face value, that’s where my nostalgia for an era I never experienced comes from.

That written, it’s not so crazy to feel like there was a time in my life that was similar to Inherent Vice and Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. With Vice, the main thing that comes across to me is the generally hanging out feeling I get as Doc seems to randomly wander through the story. I feel like high school was like that a bit: just living in the moment, not worrying too much about the future. As for Hollywood, I feel like the movies I grew up watching aren’t really made anymore, so Hollywood has changed for me. Once again, I think this happens to every generation, and it has a lot more to do with getting older than it does with cults and terrorists. But who wouldn’t want to live in a fairy tale where these terrible things never happened?

Why do I own this?

It’s a Paul Thomas Anderson movie.

Random Thoughts

“Someone might be watching.” The foreboding beginning is brought full circle in the final moments of the film as Doc keeps checking his mirror as if he’s checking for a tail. The era of paranoia had begun.

Brolin in that commercial at the beginning is the most subtly threatening hippie of all time.

“So while suspect, that’s you, was having alleged midday nap so necessary to the hippie lifestyle…”

Doc watching Bigfoot eat that chocolate-covered banana…

Now that I’ve seen Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, I get the joke Doc makes to the FBI guys about “missing” an episode.

“What’s a Puck Beaverton?” Reminds me of one of my favorite lines from Game of Thrones: “What the fuck’s a Lommy?”

“[F]rom a bass player turned record company executive, which trend watchers took as further evidence of the end of Hollywood, if not the world as they know it.” I think of this and Once Upon as films very much about the end of Hollywood and the world as people knew it back then.

“‘Gee,’ he thought, ‘I don’t know.’”

I kind of disliked/didn’t pay much attention to Sortilege’s narration the first couple times I watched this. Watching it now, I feel like her narration, while nonsensical at times (the astrology stuff, but maybe that’s just me), actually sums up a lot of the film’s themes.

“Are you sayin’ that the U.S. is somebody’s mom?”

The Last Supper image with the pizza is one of my favorites. It beautifully visualizes Owen Wilson as Christ-like (mainly in that he has returned from the “dead”), and I remember reading about it in the book and PTA captured it perfectly.

I never give this film enough credit for being a love story. That scene with Doc and Shasta looking for dope after calling the number from the Ouija Board is a great moment that effectively captures what it’s like to be in a great relationship during a carefree time. It is the perfect subplot (in a film that seems to be nothing but subplots) for the theme of innocence lost as paranoia sets in. In the film, that theme applies to the changing culture in America at the time, but it can also apply to Doc and Shasta’s relationship in the end. They seem to be slightly back together, but the innocent, carefree love of before is gone. Doc is driving forward, as is their relationship, but who knows where it’s headed now? And when did he start worrying about where things were headed? Perhaps that’s the real loss of the hippie culture of the ‘60s. People stopped living in the moment are started living in fear of the future. But what do I know? I was born in 1984.

“You know it?”

“Shakes a tambourine.”

I have to remember to start using that instead of “rings a bell.”

This is the first time I noticed that Japonica’s dad was with the Voorhees-Krueger law office. Of all the unexpected elements of this film, a reference to Jason and Freddy is pretty high on the list.

“God help us all. Dentists on trampolines.”

“Did I hit you?”

I guess I just have a soft spot for movies that are about an end of an era without being too obvious about it.

“So you guys been working for the Golden Fang long?”

In the end, Shasta references it being like the Ouija day, and it being “Just us.” But Doc looks suspicious of this now. 

“Under the paving-stones, the beach!” I forgot this text was at the end of the credits. I think it fits in with my general thoughts about the theme of the film, in that the corruption, drugs, and paranoia in general became the paving stones while enjoying a simpler life was the beach.