KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. I went to the theatre three times in the past week but only saw one new film. Partook in a second viewing of Superman which I like even more a second time around, and I caught the 4K theatrical release of Shin Godzilla, the satire of which really stood out this time... there's a Wes Anderson quality to many of the scenes and edits which is a weird thing to say about a Godzilla movie. Anywho...
This Week:
Weapons (2025, d. Zach Cregger - in theatre)
Fargo (1996, d. Joel [and Ethan] Coen - DVD)
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With his sophomore effort, following Barbarian, I'm sure there were just as many people sitting ready at their typewriters (typewriters?) to anoint Zach Cregger as "the new face of horror" as there were people ready to tear him down as the freshly anointed "new face of horror."
If anything Weapons, paired with Barbarian, is not so much anointing anything as it is diagnosing Cregger with Shyamalan syndrome. And much like M Night or Jordan Peele or Ari Aster, except with an even shorter runway, there's a quiet mob, growing louder one voice at at time to express their displeasure that anyone might even deign to heap such a "new face of" moniker upon him.
Cregger certainly does play in horror tropes, but his origins as a sketch comedian, like Peele, are inescapable in his output, and his horror is just as often comedic as it is horrific. Both of Cregger's films start with an incredible premise for a horror-thriller, but Cregger's comedy genes have taught him that it's funnier to pivot from the narrative than it is to move straight through it.
And so, as with Barbarian, Weapons turns, and turns, and turns again. It's not a direct parallel to Shyamalan's infamous "twist endings" but definitely he's going to be painted with a stylistic expectations brush that will delight some and disappoint others the more he does or doesn't hew to such expectations. You're damned if you do, Zach....
At its core Weapons is a mystery which gets unravelled by jumping from one perspective to the next, moving in an non-linear fashion, until eventually it gives up all the goods of the past leading into wrapping things up in a finale that is both tense and hilarious. Your mileage may vary.
Mysteries, especially those in the horror/fantasy/sci-fi vein are always going to face scrutiny. In worlds where the possibilities are endless, as a mystery is explored, the audience's minds are given fuel to run rampant, and the likelihood that the actual reveal, the actual solution to the mystery is going to disappoint more than it's going to delight is quite high.
So, Weapons starts with the disappearance of an entire class of kids, save one, and their teacher (Julia Garner). The kids all left their homes at 2:17 am, fleeing into the night. The teacher bears the brunt of public scrutiny even though the cops have cleared her of any involvement. The young boy as well.
The imagery, both beautifully composed night shots of children running down the wet streets and the Ring camera footage of children fleeing their homes is captivating and potent. Cregger and his cinematographer (Larkin Seiple, Everything Everywhere All At Once) really doing some fabulous work.
The story is then told jumping through different characters' vantage points, including a few delves into their nightmares. They are basically like sketches -- though premise set-ups lead to more cliffhangers instead of punchlines (or the cliffhangers are the punchlines) -- and enticing in their obliqueness if only a tiny wee bit disappointing as we lose sight of other characters for a while.
If you've read this far (and why would you?) I've already said too much. Cregger's second film, much like his first, is a bigger success the less you know going into the experience, the less you anticipate. But, again, with a mystery in play, it all becomes anticipation at a certain point, and whether it measures up to what you've concocted in your brain, or anticipated fright-or-gore-wise is really going to be a subjective experience.
There is, at least in theory, a school shooting metaphor mixed in the works, but where it's maybe most potent early on, it's all but gone by the finale. To be frank, maybe it's because I'm not American and haven't had to face school shootings to anywhere near the same degree as our neighbours to the south (not even close, like, not at all) so it's not something I have to spend a lot of time thinking about, nor is it something that is easily *ahem* triggered in me, so I didn't even notice the metaphor until after the film was over.
Is Weapons scary? There's definitely an intensity level, but I'm not sure there's any real genuine frights here. There's some gross stuff that happens, often amidst some tremendously funny moments which, all told, makes for a pretty enjoyable time. But this is not the new face of horror...or is it?
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I re-watched and reviewed Fargo back in 2014, and I find it amusing that my preamble of that review is talking about filling the gaps in my Coen Bros physical media collection and bitching about streaming. How far we've come in a decade....
Fargo is about as close to perfect a movie as you're ever going to find. What "perfect" actually means when talking about films is entirely subjective, but I take it to be that everything is working in perfect harmony to serve the vision of the director(s) and the story they are tell. The only thing that mars the whole affair is the lack of cooperation from the Minnesotan weather, which saw fit not to bless the shoot with fresh snow, and so there are plenty of scenes with trucked-in manufactured snow and melted puddles on the ground. (Just like not being American means school shootings are not on my mind, growing up in Thunder Bay means I'm hyper-attentive to what winter weather looks like in TV and movies).
Every time I watch Fargo -- which arguably isn't as often as I should, but still more than most other films -- I find myself surprised by it, noticing things I didn't notice before. The same could probably be said for the majority of the Coens' filmographies.
The first thing to jump out at me here was the opening sequence, which finds William H. Macy's Jerry Lundegaard towing a car in a snowstorm (the film's only instance of such weather) to Fargo, North Dakota to meet the two goons (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) he's hired to kidnap his own wife for ransom he's hoping his rich father-in-law will pay out. This is the first time I've watched the film that I realized it doesn't tell you exactly why Jerry is doing what he's doing, it doesn't delve into the specifics of the hole he's dug for himself, it just presents us with Jerry standing on the precipice of it.
I've always considered Fargo to be Francis McDormand's movie and Marge Gunderson as our protagonist, but the film spends as much time with Jerry, and nearly as much time as Buscemi's Carl Showalter, the short-tempered motormouth with extremely poor judgement... Showalter can never read a room. Sure, Marge is the hero, if primarily because she seems like the only intelligent character in the film, but it's sort of a three-hander, jumping and connecting each of their roles in the story as the connect to each other in an ever-tightening circle.
I don't know when "Minnesota Nice" entered my consciousness, but Fargo is truly an exploration of it, looking at how this ...what is it, Dutch?... pleasantness is such a mask for, well, so much darkness, and dumbness. Well, perhaps it doesn't mask dumbness so much as it hides intellect beneath a veneer of a wide smile and quirky accent. The dialect is infectious though, if hard to master.
It's also the first time that the Reaganomics of 1987 dawned on me. The most prosperous time in America was not the most prosperous time for everyone, certainly not for Jerry Lundegaard. His father-in-law (Harve Presnell) is a hard-assed self-made tycoon, but of the capitalist ilk that never wants anyone else to get a leg up. This film is a reminder of how the Reagan era broke the American middle class, left them wanting more and made them desperate to get it. It's a reminder of how "a little bit of money" makes men do the most deplorable things.
As I've been going through the Coens oeuvre film-by-film, this is the one I've anticipated the most. It 's one of my "foundational movies" (alongside Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting), just one of those films where I immediately understood how great cinema can be. Fargo is the one where the Coens shed completely their shell, and it's not like they were timid filmmakers before, but this is an "every tool in their bucket" film, all their signatures are here in one place, and at their most accessible. I've mentioned before how it could take me a couple viewings to get into the vibe of a Coens' film, but not with Fargo. I was on board the first time I saw it and I'm more and more on board with every viewing.
typewriters = the things the monkeys were typing on
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