An untempered sludge replete with right-wing conspiratorial imagery, dumped into a script that positions itself as offering commentary. Josh Brolin’s LOUD DAD™️ is particularly obnoxious because he seems to be right about most things. The film paints him with a sympathetic beyond simply his child being missing. Gay Asian Elementary School principal never drew a circle on a map but Josh Brolin did! He gets shit done.
Free from making didactic liberal pablum like he did in Barbarian some more of Cregger’s ugly world view leak in. One of the six perspectives the film is told from is that of an addict. We see the character call a parent and lie about getting a job in effort to get money to score, steal and try to pawn a Hello Kitty iPad and headset for the same reason and when he accidentally finds the location of the missing children he only reports it in an effort to get the reward money. This is after the film implies he has earned a beating with the dash cam off from a long suffering cop.
The cop in question doesn’t just suffer at the hands of an addict. Oh no, he’s a victim of the film’s primary villain class, women! See, there’s the attractive and inviting elementary school teacher who needles the cop (her ex-boyfriend) into abandoning his sobriety and then fucking her, there’s his shrill, unsympathetic wife who overwhelms him by changing her travel plans due to her ovulation and, finally, evil cartoon Aunt Gladys! After Barbarian used a physically exaggerated female form to underline the idea that older or overweight women are grotesque Weapons does it more simply by dressing Aunt Gladys as old woman chasing youth unconvincingly. There’s no greater crime than trying to convince us you’re young and then failing at it. Suffering at the hands of a succession of increasingly terrible women mirrors Barbarian’s structure. So all we’re left from Cregger is unfocused misanthropy. He thinks everyone is a piece of shit.
But when the film is using QAnon coded imagery like putting the kids in the basement and kidnapping children to literally eat their youth that kind of “both sides” equivocation feels dangerous. Or at least it is without digging in further.
It’s not all terrible though. When the film is willing to be funny it is hysterically funny. The last ten minutes or so feel like an extended skit from The Whitest Kids You Know. Other earlier beats were just as funny if not for sustained periods of time. It’s funny, while I laughed more at The Naked Gun I never laughed as deeply as I did at Weapons. Cregger’s directorial career thus far seems to be about him not knowing how to balance those instincts.
The film does a decent job of painting characters with small contextual moments. I just wish these characters were populating a world that wasn’t so poorly drawn. Though Weapons isn’t good I don’t necessarily want Cregger to stop. If he can figure out how listen to himself more authentically it’ll be worth watching even if what he has to say is ugly. For that reason I’ll be back next time for whatever he has to offer.