. 

It is now quite rare to see a mainstream American movie without someone in it from the MCU. Take this year’s big releases.  Jurassic World: Rebirth has Scarlet Johansson, F1 has Kerry Condon, in Minecraft it’s Rachel House, for How to Train Your Dragon you have Peter Serafinowicz, 28 Years Later features Aaron Taylor-Johnson and The Naked Gun stars Paul Walter Hauser. Sinners has three with Michael B. Jordan,Hailee Steinfeld and Wunmi Mosaku, and Superman seems to have found parts for half of the cast of Guardians of the Galaxy. Even KPop Demon Hunters figures here because of Ken Jeong’s cameo in Avengers: Endgame. I know this will just be me but sometimes I find it distracting.

There I was watching Weapons then where The Silver Surfer works for The Sorcerer Supreme, is friends with Ezekiel Stane and gets into a conflict with Thanos. On this occasion though it didn’t put me off for long because it is fair to say that this is a very involving movie.

The set up, as laid out in the trailer and detailed on the poster, is that a whole class of schoolchildren have gone missing. This really is the set up as well, there is no lead in to this, it is all covered in the first five minutes of the film. In fact narratively it has already happened before the movie starts. What is dealt with is the fallout and the resolution. It is all explained as well; there is no ambiguity here as there is in so many other horror films. It starts with a mystery, spends time building the intrigue and then ends with a satisfying conclusion. 

In fact this isn’t like other horror films in lots of ways. If you’ve seen the trailer then know that this doesn’t really let you know what to expect. Weapons is tense but not very scary, it certainly doesn’t rely on jump scares, but it is shocking and violent and often surprising. The thing is that it is also very funny, especially at the end. The tonal balance of the movie is very clever. If you’ve seen writer/director Zach Cregger’s previous film Barbarian then you might be better prepared for this, as that made bold plot choices and centred everything on character in similar ways. There aren’t many filmmakers that are as good as making what can best be described as shaggy dog ghost stories. There’s quite a lot of the traditional fairytale in here too. It is straightforward but skilled, a little gruesome, a bit magical, socially relevant, totally gripping and told by a master storyteller. The Marvel alumni are all good here but Cregger is the star. 

It will interesting to see where he goes now. Weapons is a definite step up from Barbarian and he could easily build a career around quirky horror movies Jordan Peele. Alternatively he could be added to the MCU roster himself like James Gunn and Scott Derrickson. Whatever he does I’ll be watching, and no doubt wincing, flinching, smiling and applauding as I do.