The Horror Films We Need or the Ones We Deserve? "Eddington" and "Weapons"

 

NOTE: SPOILERS ON TOP OF SPOILERS FOR EDDINGTON AND WEAPONS! Don’t read any further unless you don’t care or aren’t going to see the movies or are going to but don’t like surprises (really, you should see these films cold and then circle back with me later.)

2025 has dealt us some compelling films in the horror or horror adjacent genre. Companion, Heart Eyes, Sinners, The Monkey, Eddington, and Weapons come to mind right off the bat. It’s the last two that have been sticking with me the most and not just because they are the most recently watched.

Both are jam-packed with ideas, both are told masterfully, intelligently, and both have subtexts that don’t necessarily beat you over the head because the drama unfolding onscreen is so gripping.

I find both refreshing because they act as sort of course corrections for much of what has been referred to as “elevated horror”; genre pieces that employ narrative and narrative tropes to interrogate fairly meaty, if not profound themes. The problematic aspects of elevated horror is that, as with any other genre or any story, really, that attempts to deal with weighty issues, there is the danger that the final piece is more didactic than compelling and that the enjoyment of the work depends much on how much the viewer’s leanings align with the filmmaker’s philosophy. 

I’m a hardened horror watcher and most of the films I’ve seen over the past sixty plus years (really! My first horror film was James Whale’s Frankenstein when I was five and I bawled my eyes out because the villagers were so horrible; no, I’m not kidding! The first film that actually scared me was The Wizard of Oz at four - maybe younger - because, yep, those goddam flying monkeys…) just haven’t scared me. Few and far between are the ones that linger or provoke/evoke something like the dread intended, let alone any horrific sensation. 

The older I get - and this became increasingly noticeable in my thirties - the more I’m too aware of what the director is trying to do; without genuinely engaging relationships or more convincing plot/narrative logic (regardless of how fantastic or paranormal the events in the film are), I find myself taken out of the film and I cannot, for the life of me, shake “the observer”. This extends to Ari Aster’s Hereditary (but not Midsommar) and to some degree, Eddington (but not Beau is Afraid) or to Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook or even Kyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo/Pulse. 

To be honest, each of these films did rivet me and I did lose myself in them, but find them scary? Nope, not at all. In Aster’s films, there were definitely set pieces where I was struck by the sheer visceral experience of what I was watching (the denouement of Hereditary, for example) or the emotional content. (Hereditary and The Babadook), but I found myself equally at a remove of simply appreciating the films for their artistry. I get that people have said they were unnerved by each or all of these, but frankly, not I.

What I responded to was the sense of loss, trauma, and sadness in each of these films more than anything else, but in the case of, say, the Kurosawa film and The Babadook, the overarching sense that there was a pronounced thematic structure underpinning everything threatened to remove me further from the experience. It didn’t happen with Pulse, but it did with Kent’s film. 

Similarly, You’re Next, Smile, and others tend to wear their themes too much to the forefront for me to ignore (Smile 2, however, did not and was a really fun ride). 

All of this brings me to the two films at present and the more I turn them over in my head, the more they grow on me. Both are masterpieces and one is more social satire, while the other is very much social tragedy and both have moments of dark comedy that only serves to underscore the ruefulness of it all.

Ari Aster’s Eddington confronts not just the COVID moment but its aftermath and how so very many of us were played by social media and media in general, as well as pointing up the cynicism of the political class and the manipulation of corporations. The film is rife with brutal satire as well as brutality, and when I left the theater, I wanted to take a shower since the degrees of oiliness and ugliness of different characters was so thick. Then I wanted to turn around and watch it again (which, believe me, I will; Aster has yet to make a film that doesn’t reward repeat viewing). 

Conversely, Zach Cregger’s Weapons is imbued with a throughline of the one of the worst tragedies a community could face; the mass disappearance of children. While the first obvious metaphor would be school shootings, the film is more pointed in examining the aftermath of the event. There is the outward facing lashing out at scapegoats, the sense of general helplessness, and the general senselessness of it all. 

Both films are replete with - if not laugh out loud moments (for me, yes; but your mileage may vary) - really pitch-black moments of dark, dark comedy. All of these work because both filmmakers are so precise in what they’re saying and how they’re executing each scene. Plus, they both have great casts and they are both great looking films, compliments of cinematographers Darius Khondjhi for Eddington (and take your pick of stuff: Se7en, Delicatessen, The Immigrant, Amour, The Lost City of Z, and just before Weapons, Micky 17) and Larkin Seiple for Weapons (Everything Everywhere All at Once, Spider-Man: Far from Home).

Of the two, Weapons may resonate more emotionally; it has its heart in a very real, palpable fear of what happens to a community when a tragedy of immense proportion happens to its most vulnerable. That’s not to say that the citizens of the New Mexico town of Eddington doesn’t suffer, but the focus is on adults who - depending on how you look at it - should know better than to have fallen for propaganda, sales pitches, conspiracy theories, and corporate and political manipulation. The degree of hubris in Eddington is writ large and the fall from grace feels inevitable because it delineates with utter acidity not just how we got here, but where we are right how.

Weapons’ metaphor could also be expanded to include any great, massive tragedy from the deaths of the pandemic to mass shootings and the anger, frustration, sorrow and fear that well up and turn neighbors into mutual antagonists.

Anchoring the casts in each film are stellar performances by Pedro Pascal and Joaquin Phoenix in Eddington and Josh Brolin and Julia Garner in Weapons (with a Nic Cage level of dark energy in Amy Madigan; Jesus, if Longlegs has a sister, it really has to be Aunt Gladys here). In both cases, the performances give us a measure of empathy to hang onto in Eddington, but Aster has an almost Kubrickian degree of satire working here, while Cregger is dealing with something far more raw and while not shying away from our delusions, is much more understanding about why a community would act out the way it does.

There is a straightforwardness to the set-ups in each film. Eddington may feel more prosaic; COVID hasn’t come to a small New Mexico town where the mayor is a performative liberal and the sheriff is an anti-vaxxer who decides the mask mandate doesn’t apply to the town because “there’s no COVID here”. The film plays out the power dynamics of the well-heeled mayor (Pedro Pascal, wringing a kind of charm and even sincerity from pretty insincere fellow) and the sheriff, Joaquin Phoenix, who has enough troubles between his conspiracy-addled mother-in-law (Deirdre O’Connell just nailing it!) and his barely-there wife (Emma Stone, turning in a supporting role so subtle, it’s scary in itself); both seem to regard Phoenix’s sheriff with increasing degrees of disregard and hostility. After an argument over a senior citizen not wanting to wear a mask, and the sheriff’s standing up for the man’s right to not wear a mask, despite the mayoral edict that enforces the mandate, the officer decides to run for mayor.

This sets in motion more conflict at home, puts the Black deputy on the force in the cross-hairs of the nascent, almost all-white Black Lives Matter group of young people in town, and stirs up ancient history (at least in the sheriff’s mind) regarding his wife and the mayor into what eventually blows up from a character assassination attempt to an actual assassination of the mayor and the mayor’s son. 

This description can’t do justice to Phoenix’s depiction of the sheriff of a man who feels himself so aggrieved at every turn. State police reprimanded him for not wearing a mask, the young people in town see him and his deputies as jokes, and the mayor slaps him. Twice. He shows up at the mayor’s house to deal with a noise complaint from a campaign fundraiser and after pulling the plug on the stereo, gets it from Pascal’s dismissive pol.

Add to this the problems at home and there is a perfect storm brewing of righteous indignation, barely repressed anger, dumbass confusion, and the eruption of violence issuing therefrom. Also, his mother-in-law and wife leave him to follow after a cult leader (Austin Butler in a pitch-perfect play). 

After taking out the mayor and son, he skews the hit to point toward Micheal Ward’s deputy. I’m still not clear how much of it is initially the sheriff’s idea or how much is the other deputy’s (Luke Grimes, playing a cracker supreme), but the way it plays out, he very much wants to pin the hit on him.

Along the way, too, are the young people who mobilize for Black Lives Matter in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Cameron Mann plays a young man whose political awakening is as performative as a political awakening can be in order to get into the pants of one of the organizers, an attractive willowy blonde. He begins spouting phrases and arguing about exploitation with his folks with a vigor inversely proportional to his understanding of what he’s mouthing. He’s pivotal after things take a turn in the final act when, buckling under pressure from an indigenous law officer investigating the death of Mayor Garcia (it took place on indigenous land), the increasing unrest in town, and his, uh, COVID-induced delirium, the sheriff goes off like a firecracker.

Add into the mix is an airdrop of “Black Lives Matter protesters” likely sent by the company that wants to establish a major data/AI center near town supported by the now-deceased mayor and whose environmental risks the mayor refused to acknowledge, let alone investigate or consider despite community-wide demands to do so, and it isn’t long before that firecracker gets into a firefight with these mysterious figures, along the way taking out the Officer Butterfly, the Native American officer, seeing one deputy blown up and Ward’s deputy Michael almost so. Sheriff Cross gets shot in the head and goes down when Mann’s Brian shows up and guns down the remaining masked attacker. Hoo-boy, it’s a lot, but it’s so good and stings every bit of the way.

It lands harder after we come to a recap at the film’s end where Sheriff Cross has survived, is incapacitated and generally unresponsive but has been elected mayor, the data center has been established, and Brian has become a conservative political mouthpiece. Cross’s mother-in-law keeps him alive in his paraplegic/near-vegetative state and  we end on deputy Michael out in the desert among the cacti at target practice. Oh, yes, payback is coming for the Sheriff’s selling out of his deputy.

It’s remarkable how Aster keeps all these plates spinning and doesn’t lose a one. At every turn,  there is some boob or rube falling for a dubious narrative. Around every turn, you get the feeling that the sheriff isn’t the only person who feels aggrieved or wronged and frankly, no one comes out particularly unscathed, eaters literally or psychologically (and/or politically). No one his presented as particularly sympathetic, either, though each actor is able to bring a humanity to their characters that kept me, at least, from despising everyone. Except Michael, which might actually be the point.

Or, or it might well be that Aster is asking us to find the humanity in those who either actually or even through their own perception, have been done wrong by the government or whatever agency they feel has done them wrong. I would like to think it is the latter case. In any event, Eddington demands a clear-eyed look at the rotten state of affairs that has been aggravated since before COVID but was certainly amplified and has expanded down to the present moment.

It’s not a horror film like Hereditary or a surrealist fable of existential despair like Beau is Not Afraid, but it is horrific and I would argue, there is a pervasive existential dread, though one that pales as we travel through the very real of the quotidian fascist US dystopia.

By contrast, Weapons has a different take on a massively tragic event. One Wednesday morning, third grade teacher Justine Gandy enters her classroom to find all but one seat vacant. Alex is the sole child in her class, sitting quietly. Overnight, seventeen children left their houses at 2:17 in the morning and ran into the darkness. We start with the story narrated by a child (Scarlet Sher doing the voiceover), telling the tale as surely as anyone living in a small community would; this is a true story, but what she’s going to tell us is the way it happened, not the official tale which came out as a result of cover-up upon cover-up. 

What unfolds is less about the children themselves than how the adults deal (or don’t) with their mass disappearance. Central to the narrative are half a dozen people; Justine herself (Julia Garner, playing the polar opposite of her Silver Surfer role in Fantastic Four: First Steps), Archer (Josh Brolin, the man can’t turn in a bad performance if he tried), whose son Matt is one of the disappeared children, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich in an expertly layered performance) a struggling cop who’s on the wagon until Justine calls him up, gets him drunk, and they spend the night together (despite his marriage to his chief’s daughter…so, whoops?), Marcus, the ever-reliable and fun Benedict Wong, the school principal, James (Euphoria's Austin Abrams, doing a scarily credible job),a meth head who runs afoul of Paul), and Alex himself. The sequence of stories is key to the overall thrust of the narrative. It’s the child who is the last to be paid attention.

What we see unfold first is the scapegoating of Justine, principally by Archer whose son was one of the kids gone missing, and who self-medicates and wants desperately to talk to Alex against the repeated warnings of her boss Marcus. Indeed, it’s Marcus who has to point out to Justine that her desire to talk to Alex is less about him than about her needs. When she invites Paul to join her at a bar, he says something similar, underscoring how much she feels “it’s all about her.” 

Not so dissimilarly, and perhaps with greater “right”, Archer vandalizes Justine’s car, painting the word “WITCH” on it in bright red letters, not knowing that he’s not wrong about the source of the community’s woes, just the person. Archer is racked with pain and loss and fucks up a contracting job, perhaps his marriage, but begins to see how he’s wronged Justine when they compare notes about where the children might have run off to.

Paul’s life may well be ruined. After his slip off the wagon and roll in the hay with Justine, it really is pretty obvious his marriage is going to hit the rocks sooner than later. Before all that happened, earlier in the day before meeting up with Justine, he’d chased meth-head James, clocked him (James had a needle in his pocket after he told Paul he had nothing of the sort that could jab the officer). Paul’s dash-cam was on and that rather began his decline. He explained to his boss/father-in-law what had happened and the decision was to do nothing, as long as the citizen he accosted didn’t press charges. After his dalliance with Justine and his facing off the wagon, he realizes his goose is cooked at work. His father-in-law scowls at him from a meeting in his office and Paul suits up and heads to get a car when he sees James, who he distinctly told to stay away. James takes off, Paul pursues in a squad car and after James says he knows where the disappeared children are, elects to follow up. Paul enters the house, and falls under Gladys’s enchantment.

Marcus also gets the raw end of the stick, what with having to get Justine to stand down from talking to Alex and realizing that a wellness check might be called for. When he sets up a meeting with Alex’s parents, Alex’s aunt Gladys shows up instead; his father is very ill and couldn’t come (but it might not be that bad!), could they reschedule before he has to call Child Protective Services? What happens in the meantime is that she shows up at Marcus’s house with his husband Terry and proceeds to perform a blood ritual after clipping a lock of Terry’s hair that “weaponizes” Marcus against his husband (Marcus beats hims to death with repeated head-butts). She performs another with a lock of Justine’s hair and Marcus runs out the door with his arms spread in the same manner as the children did on that Wednesday morning. Marcus finds her at the gas station where she’s being confronted by Archer who wants answers but who also fights Marcus off until Marcus get the better of him. Justine runs into the gas station convenience store to elude Marcus but he’s on her until she’s able to get in her car and drive off, Marcus following foot. Archer follows Marcus and the chase ends when Marcus is hit by a car, his skull shattered on the street.

James is having a bad day of not having much to fence to get money for his meth. He tries to boost a kids’ tablet, but the pawnbroker isn’t interested, he gets rousted by Paul when he’s seen trying to break into a warehouse and later gets knocked out when a needle he forgot pricked Paul’s finger; later in the day, he sees newspapers not picked up in front of Alex’s family’s house and takes that as evidence to break in. He does, grabs some silverware and electronics, and runs like hell when Alex’s parents awake from their stupors after he’d seen the disappeared kids in the basement. At the pawn shop, he sees a sign for a $50,000 reward and calls the police station about how to cash in. As he’s coming around the corner to the station, he sees Paul whom he convinces to take him to Alex’s house into which Paul vanishes for hours before coming out and dragging James in.

Last is Alex. As I mentioned, this only makes narrative sense since this movie has been focused on how the community has or has not moved on, dealt or not dealt with the disappearance of the  children. We see in flashback how he’s bullied at school by a kid named Matt, and shortly told that his mother’s aunt will be coming to live with them. It turns out that she’s very old and very ill. That said, she quickly sets up a private coven of one after taking over Alex’s mother and father minds. Next, she controls Alex by showing him that she can make them harm themselves (initially by stabbing themselves in the face with forks) or she says, she could make them harm each other. “I could make them eat each other.” Gladys is a lineal descendant of every evil godmother in fairy tale lore. 

She blackmails Alex by saying that if he says anything about her to anyone outside, she will destroy his parents. She tells him that she needed to do this because she thought they could help cure her. Alex asks if he helped her would she return home? She said yes, and she charges him with getting a personal item of every kid in his class. The easiest thing was for him to nab the self-written name tags on their bins in the classroom. Thus, the great conjuring is set in motion and the children wind up in the basement. Yes, we are very much in Grimm territory now.

By the time she’s brought Paul and James under her sway, she tells Alex they will soon be leaving. More people will come; and sure enough, we see Archer and Justine parked outside the house deliberating on next moves. Inside, Alex’s parents stand guard in front  of Gladys’s door behind a line of salt that Alex is told not to cross.

Outside, we go back to Archer and Justine who see the front door open and Paul comes out, waving them in. They enter the dark living room and Paul continues to wave Justine  forward in the gloom. Archer sees the salt line but it’s too late and Paul is activated and goes after Justine. James has likewise been called into action and attacks Archer. Paul’s assault on Justine is terrifying; James’s is comedic as Archer keeps punching him out and James keeps getting up.  Or as Archer throws him around the room and he keeps coming back at him.

When it looks like Paul has the upper hand on Justine, she pulls his revolver and kills him. James is strangling Archer at the top of the basement stairs where he can see the children. Justine blows James’s brains out and goes in search of Alex who crossed the salt line and is now running from his parents. In the basement, Gladys turns Archer who goes after Justine and Alex has gone upstairs with strands of Gladys’s hair, a stick from  her odd plant, and performs the ritual which sets the children on her. A chase ensues and eventually,  they descend on her like the Furies, rending her limb from limb and decapitating her, at which point, Alex’s parents calm down and Archer releases Justine.

Our narrator tells us that Alex left town to go live with a kinder aunt, his parents were institutionalized, the children retuned to their  parents, and some of them were even beginning to speak again.

Of the two films, I’ve said that Weapons is more thematically rich and more humanistic. Certainly, the first metaphor that comes to mind is mass shootings and, indeed, at one point, Archer sees a machine gun hovering in the sky with the red numerals “217” on it before it fades into the clouds over Alex’s house. But the film touches on so much else;  addiction, sure, to drugs, to alcohol, but also, to power, and the harm these addictions can wreak.

Certainly, the critique of the “madness of the crowds” is pointed here, although not as much as in Eddington. Actually, if we press further, Cregger’s film is willing to present us with a provisional healing or the possibility of that, in terms of Justine and Archer’s relationship. Of course, there’s also the sense that this is the work of a master fabulist because, let’s be clear, children killed at mass shootings can’t return to their parents. When I left the theater, that hit like a train, but only made the film work even better for me.

Both films don’t scrimp on the gore, both are full to the brim with dark humor that reflect a not-unwarranted dim view of humanity at this very moment (if Cregger’s might be a slightly lighter view?) and both are strong enough tonics to brace us to consider our moment in this country’s history more deeply. 

Desperate times lead to desperate measures; whether it’s a community fraying because of societal stressors of a politicized pandemic or the erasure of masses of children (in our world, owing to insane lack of gun control in this country); we struggle repeatedly to find solutions. In both cases, there is exploitation by the ruling classes to turn people against one another or to so unmoor one’s sense of the world as to lash out at teachers or to demand answers for the unanswerable and be met with history’s or God’s silence.

As a coda. Zach Cregger noted that Alex’s story was very much autobiographical, though his parents were consumed by alcoholism as opposed to a witch’s spell. “This foreign substance comes in and it changes everyone’s behavior… The house becomes a scary place. You can go to school and act like everything’s cool, and then you come home and you hide from a zombie parent.” (1)

Note

1. Breznican, Anthony. Weapons Ending Explained:  The Director Reveals the Origins of Amy Madigan’s Creepy Gladys. Vanity Fair. August 11, 2025. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/weapons-ending-amy-madigan