August 8, 2025 • 49 mins
We’re heading to the suburbs for Zach Cregger’s followup to Barbarian, Weapons! Rosie is joined by film critic Matt Donato for a quick spoiler free review and then a spoiler-filled deep dive!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning. Today's episode contains spoilers for Zach Creggor's Weapons, which
is a very scary movie. So either go and watch
it first, or if you're too scared, listen to us
talk about it and then you can decide whether or
not you want to go see it. But it is
really scary. Hello. I'm Rosie Knight, and welcome back to
(00:32):
X ray Vision, the podcast where we dive deep into
your favorite shows, movies, and pop culture, as well as
some comics because you know I love those. We are
here at iHeart Podcast where we'll bring bringing new episodes
every Tuesday and Thursday, the summer's biggest movies every Friday,
and news on Saturday. And today is Friday, which means
we are in the popcorn pop out talking about Oh Baby,
(00:55):
Zach Creig's new movie Weapons, So we are going to
share our non spoiler thoughts. Then we're going to dig
deep into the movie and what we think about it,
and to do that, I am introducing a guest co host,
a wonderful pal of mine who is also a fantastic
film critic who you might have read at Bloody Disgusting
or Fangoria and is also behind the very fun certified Forgotten,
(01:18):
where you can find thoughts and podcast episodes on movies
that maybe no one else remembers, and so you know,
I love being on that site and it is Matt Donato,
thank you so much for joining me today on X
ray Vision. How you doing that?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I am doing great, And thank you for having me
here to talk about some weapons.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
It is so fun. I'm very glad that you're going
to be here to talk about it with me, because
this is a crazy movie and I am really really
happy with how positive the feedback has been so far,
because I was not one hundred percent sure that would
be the case. I didn't know where this was going
to land for people. But I'm really excited. I loved
your review of it, and I was super stoked you
(01:57):
could join us. So let's get it. We're gonna start
with some non spoiler thoughts. So, Matt, I'm gonna ask
you what, let's go back do Zach's kind of big
breakout debut. What were your thoughts on Barbarian? Where are
you a Barbarian fan?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, I'm high on Barbarian. I do think it is
a fantastic debut. It really came out the gate and
announced Kraiger as this just force of horror storytelling that
doesn't really play by any rules, and I feel like
that's something that's hard to replicate. And we'll get into
obviously when we talk about weapons. But for Barbarian itself,
it's very twisty. It's very like does a really good
(02:34):
job of concealing those twists as well, because I'm sure
you know we're both horror fancy here. So we've seen
our share of movies that try to throw the curveball
and it just doesn't work, and yet Zach Kreger pulls
it off like multiple times in the same movie. Plus
that payoff is just something that I Number one, you're
not expecting. Number two is just for the books. I mean,
over the last decade, we know how studio horrors become
(02:54):
a little more predictable, not bad, like I like my
studio horror. I'm not a Blumhouse hater or anything by
that means, but Barbarian was just different, and Barbarian was
just fantastic. So for me, I came into this really
high already on Zach Gregor and Barbarian, So it was
a little bit of a lofty hype for weapons to
live up to.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, I agree, that's actually what I was going to
ask you about next, because I too. I saw Barbarian
at a really funny fan screening where like none of
us knew what it was going to be about. It
was it like the Little Mel in Hollywood, you know,
the Mel and Westward and when it had that kind
of famous smash cut now and you end up, you know,
in La everyone in the cinema was like, what the
(03:35):
fuck is going on? Like, how do you tell a
story like this? How does this connect? And the way
that it plays where the first kind of thirty minutes
of Barbarian are like this terrifying kind of like interpersonal thriller,
and then you know the justin long stuff is so
funny and just it's Yeah, I loved it so much.
I super producer Joelle and I we showed it to
(03:57):
our friend Danny. It was one of the funny experiences
to watch someone else not know what's going to happen
and kind of get to watch their reactions. So I
love that. But yeah, going in to weapons, kind of
what were your hopes for it after this, because, like
you said, there's one of the best horror movies of
the last kind of ten years.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
The hopes, like I said, are very high. And you know,
the hope specifically of what I wanted from Weapons was
more of that originality because you know Zach Greger, you know,
painting himself into a corner for better or worse to say, like,
you know, he comes out with this fantastic film that
we're talking about Barbarian, But then is that sophomore slove
going to happen? Is the next movie? And be able
(04:38):
to do that? Can he pull off the same kind
of storytelling that is both fractured but revealing and really
hit us with another one of those payoffs. So there
was a lot on the line, and it's not that
I didn't think it could be achieved. But again, we've
been doing this for how long and we've seen his
filmmakers right.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
And also as well, you know that Barbarian had this
crazy kind of production route and got stuck in that
weird like twentieth century to Disney change and was it
going to get made? And then you have you know,
Weapons is like a WB Studio horror, like they got
a lot of money behind it.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, I was going to say, and not only that,
but like it was the entire bidding war, like Jordan
Peele literally fired his management company because they lost the
bidding war for weapons, and I think it was thirty
thirty seven million or ten million going to Creigor directly,
like off the bat before. I think it was even
before the script was and it was just literally like
a speck, and it was like, here's where we're going.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
A lot of sense actually, because I was also reading
yesterday about how Cregor had had to recast the entire
movie with Weapons because he lost Pager of Pascaldi to scheduling,
and he was like, oh, this is a totally different
movie without him. So even this has had its kind
of interesting stuff. So then, how did you feel, Let's
do before we dive in, we'll do a little non spoiler.
(05:55):
How did you feel when you came out of weapons
and you'd seen it. What were your kind of non
spoiler thoughts.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I felt relieved because of the hype we were talking about.
I felt excited because Craiger proved now twice that he
can work with advanced storytelling telling methods in the horror genre.
It's not just a spooky, scary acting. It was funny
like this with Josh Brolin has said about it too.
He's like, I love this movie because I reminded him
(06:21):
he was in horror movies before. He kind of got
like literally he was like, oh, that's right. I worked
with your Hooven and I worked with Del Toro. Oh
my god. But you know what he said is like
he himself was so impressed with Zach Creigor as a
filmmaker because he's like, this is this is his second
and he's like a veteran ready and just the idea
that like of what what this movie achieved and it
lived up to all those lofty highs we.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Were talking about, So I really did that.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Non spoilers, and it's just the payoffs there. It's it's
it's action, it's comedy, it's horror, it's drama, it's it's everything.
It's a total package kind of horror film.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
He's unbelievably well versed in kind of how to play
with all those different genres too, which feels insane. But
when you're watching this especially you know the first kind
of I say, first third of the movie, when it's
very much in its mystery kind of bag, you really
feel like, oh, you're watching like a prestige like Hollywood
thriller because you have these actors like Josh Brilin, you
(07:18):
have Julia Gana, you know these it feels like there
is a heaviness and like a seriousness to the movie
that we don't often get in genre. But it still
manages to have those like playful, strange reveals. And he's
so good at reimagining kind of or reimagining the supernatural
(07:39):
in a way that feels like really really cool. Let's
we'll go to a quick ad break, and then when
we come back, we will talk spoilers. So if you
don't want to hear spoilers, guys, you can. You can
stop listening now and then come back when you've seen
the movie or when you've been too scared to watch
the movie and you want to come.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Back to it.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And we're back, okay, Matt, let's try and let's try.
And Weapons is kind of like barbarian I feel like,
what if you try to, like do a detailed recap,
you would sound insane, But what is what's the if
you're pitching weapons to somebody, to a friend, to a
(08:32):
colleague who maybe doesn't check this out, Like, what's your pitch?
How do you describe the movie's uh, and we're going
spoiler right, this is spoilss Okay, this is like full territory.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
It is. It is a little bit of Tarantino and
the Coen Brothers trying to do a suburban Witchcraft story
that is about broken people finding meaning in nothing and
having to survive somehow.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, I love it, if that makes sense. I think
that's really great because I think that the thing that
people are probably going to be surprised about with this
movie is despite the strangeness and the funniness, there is
like this very like deep beating heart of kind of
this like loss, not making enough of your life. What
(09:24):
does it mean to lose the thing that means the
most to you? But also like what is the thing
that means the most to you? I think the just
Browling character has a really interesting arc of kind of
realizing like, oh, I guess, I guess I do love
my kid. Now my kid isn't around, you know. And
I think that is like such an interesting through line
of this movie of people who it's almost like they
(09:47):
sort of don't know what they have in their suburban, calm,
you know, boring life until as the trailers has let
people know. And I think has intrigued audiences. Everywhere, an
entire class kids goes missing. Apart from one there's just
one kid who is in the class who comes back,
and they all leave in the middle of the night
(10:08):
two seventeen, and then you kind of unravel this paranoia
and strangeness that is going on in the town until
it is revealed that at the center of this is
a witch, which I just thought was so great because
also when we were all guessing about what this was about,
(10:30):
I think there was a lot of alien guesses. There
was definitely a lot of kind of like, you know,
maybe it's a kind of you know, pod people kind
of thing. Maybe. So what were your what was your
biggest theory going into weapons.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I was thinking more of the lines of a cult
like activity because of the suburban setting and the way
that horror filmmakers, you know, typically toy around with like Pleasantville,
let's say, and the idea of, like you said, the
idyllic like I grew up in a Jersey suburb, And
to me, the most interesting commentary on suburbia is the
idea that it is like a little cult like you know,
when I go home and visit my hometown. Now it
(11:08):
does feel like I don't belong there, and like everyone's
in some club that like I'm not a part of.
So to me, I don't know why, but I went
with some kind of like the parents are in on it,
real fucked up scenario, Like that's that's kind of where
my mind went, especially because it's Zach Craiger and what
I saw he did in Barbaria, and I'm like, oh,
he's gonna push this hard.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
He's not afraid to do something that's like a little
bit more boundary pushing.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
And I will say where we end up with the
Witchcraft like it's funny because it's more quote unquote predictable
than Barbarian. I would say this movie's a little more
straightforward despite the chopped up chapter storytelling, but that's no
less impactful. I would say this story. Craiger has said
this out loud that like this was inspired by a
(11:53):
tragedy in his life, Like if you follow the Whitest Kids,
you know you know that Craiger lost a dear friend
and that's where weapons came from, and that's why it
goes back to that whole broken people. So I really
like that this movie has at heart and through line
like rooted in that.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
I actually think that you touch on something that I
really love about both this and Bring Her Back, which
I was like a huge fan of by the Philippoe
Brothers who we had on the pod and everything, and
I just thought that movie was incredible. I think that
we're getting movies that are kind of, I guess, evolving
from that whole you know, horror is grief kind of
(12:28):
throw the thing that people now act as if it
is like a trope in every movie. You're trying to
make a movie serious, you know, you make it about grief.
But the funny thing is we're now getting people who
are incredible filmmakers who are like, well, okay, that's that's
all well and good, but that can't be it, Like
we have to like what does it mean? What does
that grief do to you? What is it like? What
is And again Philippoe Brothers would Bring Her Back, they
(12:50):
had a really they lost someone who was really close
in their life, a young kid, and that completely changed
the movie. And I think that these kind of person
stories are expanding our idea of kind of what horror
can be. Because obviously something like Midsummer you know, that
was something that Ariasta spoke about being you know, kind
(13:12):
of his own treaties on him being a bad boyfriend. Ironically,
I'm like, I love that. It's like, the craziest thing
is what if I just killed myself in this movie
because I was such a bad partner. But like, you
know that kind of cliche almost of like, oh well,
if it's about emotions, it's like and it's about loss,
then it has to be really serious. But especially with weapons.
(13:35):
Zach Craig is like, no, Like, what I want you
to feel is the strangeness of what it feels like
to lose someone in the way that the rest of
the world completely keeps going on, but you are frozen
in that moment and yeat me going into it. I
definitely was thinking in a cult type situation, maybe some
kind of take on the satanic panic, because you do
(13:56):
have this idea of the town that is going to
go in. It's like they don't know what's going on.
They all look towards Miss Gandhi, who's played by Julia Ghana,
who plays the teacher who was the teacher of this classroom.
It starts to seem like they're gonna blame her. They're
blaming her, but as it evolves. I think the thing
that works so well for me and when it comes
(14:17):
to those kind of surprises and twists, is actually more
about which characters connect and who kind of teams up
to solve this mystery. I found that to be really
really interesting. I think they did a great job. I
have to say I love Pedro Pascal, don't we all?
But I think this cast is the perfect cast for
this movie. There's something you know, old and anwrikers in
(14:39):
this in another unbelievable role after iron Heart, where he
just totally outperformed what was written for him, and here
he gets some of the grossest, best weirdest moments too.
So when you finally get to that reveal and we
kind of learned that they're the one kid who survived
his you know aunt moved in and she's very obviously
(15:03):
a funny, creepy old witch. I love the way they
visualize that, which is kind of this hyper glam clown
esque makeup, like really unusual and different from what we've
seen before. When the witchcraft moment came and they kind
of make the reveal of how these people are being murdered,
which is this magic that we never get over explained,
(15:25):
which I love. But it's very simple, very folk horrorish,
which is, you know, hair wrapped around a twig and
then if you snap it, she can set the children
on any of the adults in the town or anyone
in the town who who she has that the hair of.
What was your feeling when that was revealed?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
So like I go back to where it's a safer storytelling, No,
I think I would say, like I would describe as
a little safer and like you said, it's supernatural. It's
really playing around in these like paralormal stuff but start
not parallem but like witchcraft. But I was excited once again.
I came back to this because witchcraft itself is always
portrayed in a certain way, like think of most popular
(16:06):
as recent like the Witch or something like that, the
vich if you've pronounced it that way, but the bitch.
But like it's it is puritanical, it's period like Salem
Witch Trials kind of stuff. We don't really get a
lot of witchcraft movies set in the suburbs. So that
was the twist. That was where I thought Craiger really
pulled it off to go, all right, we're going to
(16:28):
use like mythology and folk Lord, it's all going to
be there, but we're going to destroy like a suburban
town from within, and we're just going to like see
it descend into chaos. And you know, I do want
to go back to really quickly what you said about
the whole like being in grief horror in that moment
where you know, Hereditary obviously ushered in this entire movement
of what people have dubbed trauma porn or trauma horror,
(16:50):
whatever you want to call it, and I like, I
think what you're saying is exactly right where it got
a bad rap for a while, because the horror genre
is about movements. You know, there's a popular theme at
the time, and every studio, every filmmaker is going to
try to replicate that because that's what's popular. Hey, hereditaryan Gangbusters,
So we all have to do our Hereditary. There were
great examples, there were bad examples, but it's also been
(17:12):
a while since Hereditary at this point. Yeah, so a
movie like Weapons to me, you know, I think as
we dissect the horror genre specifically, like you know, we
were very in tune with horror and everything that's going
on with it, and I'm always thinking, like, what's the
next movement, And for a while I thought it was
going to be slashers coming back, because obviously Scream brought
that back, and so many other things like slashers internationally
(17:34):
have been churned up the whole time. Go watch the
conference on Fli's go watch that, Like, I have so
many slashers.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And even like when that big Indonesian wave of hurricane,
they were kind of leaning into that a little bit
more like there's more classic kind of there's almost like
Evil Dead esque like comedic ones, but you still have
that slasher notation of like there's a house that you're
in and you've returned back somewhere and then suddenly you'll
start getting killed off one by one. Queen of black
magic and stuff. Yeah, I definitely think Scream was heralding
(18:06):
a return to that, especially because those movies got better
as they like five was great. I liked it. It was
a great return. I thought they did some really silly,
fun fifth Horror stuff, but by six you're getting like
a brutal, like kind of super violent version of what
a slash it could be. And I was like, oh,
maybe this is what slashes look like post Saul.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Post Well and like we just got hard eyes. We
just so like I thought that's where we were going
with all this. But now that I've seen a bunch
of festival movies this year, and there are movies like
Touch Me and Descend It, which is coming out this week,
which are reimagining, like you said, grief horror and the
way you just said, you know, bring bring Her Back,
and Weapons. They're all in the grief horror realm, but
(18:47):
they're elevating it in the way something different that is different, right,
Like we're not just anymore where oh, the vampire's depression,
we get it, like we've done this before, we understand
at this point. Now we're just getting these filmmakers who
are they are digging deeper. It's not just about the
vampire's depression. It's probably very fucked up movie about depression
and it goes places. And I think Weapon is a
(19:08):
great distillation of all of that, Like Weapons is where
horror is headed in large and the idea that we're
still going to be in that hole, like we're not
getting rid of the grief element, like that is look
at the world around us, you're influenced by that.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
The universal thing that's why, you know, hereditary everyone's had
an argument with their mom, like everyone's been to a
spooky house. You know, there are elements to it that,
and obviously with hereditary, grief, losing someone in your family,
the guilt you feel, those things are all universal. I
think it's kind of similar the way that, like you said,
(19:43):
there's bad examples, there's good examples. You know, my friends
who's an incredible cartoonist, Bianca Eunice was one of the
first people who kind of ever told me about what
they perceived as post get Out, you know, the Jordan
Peel industrial complex, And that wasn't to do with Jordan
and his films. It was to do with other people
trying to make them right. And so I think that
(20:04):
with Grief Horror, you ended up in a situation where
some studios or smaller places were basically just saying, like, well,
just say it about that. It wasn't even necessarily about it.
They were reimagining films to add that element, whereas something
like weapons, you feel like you are digging into Zach
Kregor's kind of brain and how he perceives stuff like this.
(20:27):
And I think as well, I remember at the screening
that I went to of Barbarian. I was really blown
away because so Ash crossanm was there doing a Q
and A. And one of the things that Zach could
revealed was like the inspiration of Barbarian was he had
read a book about how women are supposed to stay
safe when men are around, and it's all these rules
(20:49):
that you're given, and so he wanted he thought, well,
what if I make a situation where a woman is
basically ignoring every single red flag because she's trying to
be polite and she feels like she can't do that?
And I thought that was such an interesting in to
a movie that then kind of goes off in all
these interesting directions, but still with the Justin Long character
brings it back to that. And I think that here
(21:11):
we get through the Josh Broling character especially, and then
through the you know, the kid who is the relative,
let's say, of the witch, we get these really interesting
deeper explorations. I mean, something I loved about Bring Her Back,
that I talked to the guys about and that I
didn't get to talk to Zach about because you know,
(21:32):
Junket times or Junket times. But this also felt like
another movie to me. That's about like how scary it
is to be a kid like you're It's like and
to rely on all these adults and have to trust adults.
And how when you're like ten, if an adult comes
to your house and says, well, I'm in charge of
your house now your parents aren't, well, you go okay,
because you're ten, you know. And I think that is
(21:53):
something that I'm really enjoying at the moment in this
wave of horror, is kind of this look at like
a way that adults can let kids down and can
kind of put them in these dangerous situations and how
scary that is. I found that to be really interesting.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, and I mean it extends even further, like when
looking at weapons. Let's say, going back to like the characters.
I mean, Julia Gardner's character I think is brilliant because
she's the school teacher where her entire class goes missing,
as you said, and she immediately becomes the scapegoat for
the towns. The idea of like, well, obviously it's you,
Like you're the person we trust as a teacher to
(22:30):
have our kids and basically like caretake for our kids
for all day. So obviously, like you're at fault. But
then you go back to her home life and like
she's an alcoholic and she is a mess, and she
is trying to like solve this as a detective who
has no power and the brokenness like being there. And
then Alden's character, you know, he's a cop and he's
(22:52):
also got his own baggage. Like everyone is just a
level of broken and messed up. That makes the investigation,
let's say that much better because like Brolin Archer, he's
he's just rage. He's yeah, he's furious and grief and
so many things. And talking to Brolin like that was
the first thing I asked him, you know, like you know,
I said him, like, hey, you're a father, Like how
(23:13):
do you approach a role like this and not like
dig in too deep or like become too fearful yourself.
And he's like, honestly, I've never played a character like this.
Because of that, He's like, I could not imagine this
happening to my children, so I didn't want to put
myself in that scenario. But he's like, I finally, you know,
I pushed myself to tackle that character because of it,
and like, yeah, I needed to express those emotions. I
(23:33):
needed to feel that, and he's like, I just yeah,
like how do you not how does that not become personal?
Speaker 1 (23:38):
So yeah, that's that's so funny. That was also like
my first question was like you are a dad, like
how did this feel? And he was like ended up
with a little tear in his eye. Like I think
the interesting thing to me as well is kind of
as someone who doesn't have kids, you know, I did
still I do still feel like when you know, I
have nieces and nephews and stuff. But I think that
(23:59):
there's a an interesting, like feral exploration of kind of
what parenting is, which obviously has also been really interesting
in movies like You Speak No Evil, you know, and
stuff like that, these kind of ideas of what does
it mean to be a parent and who are like
(24:19):
how do you be a good parent? And what do
you need to teach your kids? And I think like
throughout the years, kind of scary kid horror has often
touched on that, but I think this is one of
the most unexpectedly great scary kid horror movies that we've
had in like a long time.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
And it's funny because the kids are missing like that,
like the idea that it is a very much scary
kid horror movie, and there are elements where there's some
like nightmare classroom scenes that really mess with you.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Fucking the end of this movie, I think I felt
like it was very enjoyable and exciting and great, and
I was like cheering it on. But there are people
I've spoken to who were like legitimately shocked because at
the end of the movie, guys, the young boy who
is able, who is the you know, the nephew hypothetically
(25:09):
of this witch who has moved into town. He manages
to wrap her hair around the string and we get
the kids completely just eating her alive, like destroying her
in kind of the daylight of the town, and it
is really brutal, and it feels very cathartic and you're like, yeah,
like fuck, yeah, this is great. But for some people,
I think also terrifying because that's not how they perceive children.
(25:34):
That's also incredibly there are moments in this movie where
you feel like, like I said, you're watching a kind
of prestige mystery thriller, but there are moments where Olden peels,
you know, his face gets peeled off with a view
with a fruit peeler, you know, so that kind of balance.
What do you think is about Craig's filmmaking that kind
(25:56):
of makes that balance and juxtapisation work so well, because
it's very much what he did in Barbarian with the
kind of the head smash and then the beautiful lac.
He likes to keep us unsettled.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I think it's the character development specifically and letting these
performers really explore within their characters' emotions like this. I
think I said this before, but like, this doesn't feel
like your standard. The characters are just there to kind
of walk through a haunted house or if it's a slasher,
get killed off. This is very much a character piece
(26:31):
for a lot of the movie. Oh yeah, and I
think that is at times to the film's detriment a
little bit. I really like weapons, but I do think
there's a little bit of sag in the middle for
me where when it does turn into this idea of well,
it's a movie about perception because the event happens like
the event happens to the town, and we see it
(26:51):
from the perspective of different characters like they Basically it's
a chapter base and one chapter is archer At. One
chapter is like Julia Gardner's character. So I think the movie,
very briefly in the middle, gets a little lost in
showing us the same thing but from different angles. And
while that is interesting, it's a little bit of repetition
(27:13):
for me. But outside of that little moment, I think
Craiger does a brilliant job actually of letting the story
flesh itself out and letting the release of information be
like a slow drip versus giant reveal here and then
lull and giant reveal, Like everything is pretty much meticulous,
(27:33):
and everything is so calculated. Like even there's there's a
scene where it's a hallucination or a dream and Archer
sees in the sky this giant gun and it's it's
so cartoonish, but it's so good because the title weapons
is so misleading, and that alone is going to throw people.
And some people might ask at the end, like, well
(27:54):
why is it called weapons? Even at the end and
that little scene of the of the imaginary ak with
a clock on it of two seventeen and Archer just
staring at it like it's such a good throw because
you don't really know yet still and you're still being like,
is this gonna be like a gun commentary America.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Like what, that's definitely what you feel like. You're like, okay,
so is this about? You know, there's this incredible horror
ritter called Kirsten White, who who I love. She writes
all different kinds of stuff, but she wrote a book
called Hide about people who go into an old theme
park and are essentially, you know, hunted down by some
kind of mythical creature while they play hide and seek.
(28:33):
But it's really a commentary on gun violence and how
we just send our kids to these really dangerous places
every day and how that can happen to them. And
I was as soon as the gun came up, I'm like, okay,
so is that what this is about? Is this about
how we like send our kids to school and we
put them in this space that is perceived to be safe,
but really you really can end up in a situation
(28:55):
where there's only one kid left over. I don't think
those are like, I don't think it's a miss. I
think Zach knows what he's doing. It's almost like a
it's almost like a thematic red herring because I think
it is there and it's true. But when you see
that gun, you're just like, oh, Okay, this is what
the movie's about, and then you know, ten minutes later
it's like, oh no, that's not what it's about.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
But maybe because it's not long after I think where
we finally do like see the Witchcraft in full form.
But yeah, I think so, it's that element. It's the
way that he is able to, number one, tell this
story so eloquently with these characters who have meaning and
depth and they're all there. But then you do, you
get you get the gun moment where you said it
(29:35):
it's a red herring, and it puts you, It puts
you on the trail of something that is conceivable to
what this movie could be about and it completely is not.
And that way of convincing us, I think that's what
it is. He's able to convince us of what's happening
when it's completely not and a lot of films aren't
able to do that. You know, a lot of films
can't really hide behind their themes and their storytelling. They're
(29:56):
not as adept at that.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
That's a fantastic way of putting actually, because that's what
I think the biggest power of Barbarian was was he
convinced us what the movie was about in the first
you know, twenty five minutes and then suddenly you're like, oh, actually, uh,
this is a completely different film. So also, let's talk
about at the heart of it, we do have our witch,
(30:19):
Gladys Lily played by Amy Madigan, and like, what I
think is gonna go down as one of our best
kind of you know, exploitation, which kind of performances. Let's
talk a little bit about that. How did that work
for you?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
It is so good what she accomplishes, because it's what
the first vision that we see of her, I believe
is a is Julia Gardner's nightmare ye where she is
like basically coming out of her ceiling at her like
in one of those like jomb scare moments, but just
it's the pale makeup face, it's the really bad wig.
(30:55):
It's like the nylon jumpsuit too. Like everything about her
is so uns settling and surreal, Like her character alone
in the way she presents herself is it looks nothing
like the people in this serb in town, so like
she sticks out like a sore thumb, and yet nobody
is thinking about her. Everyone's too obsessed with their own
(31:16):
ideas and their own revenge arks. Let's say, to even
care about this insane clown looking person running around the
woods like it's happening.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
She looks like an evil clown, but that's just like
she's just like a weird old.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Lady, but she is. I think that performance is so
key to everything because for as much as weapons is
the grounded storytelling piece of what we've just said about
all these characters who have these things that they are
working through, it is also a crazy ass looking movie
and you have like you have the character in the
(31:50):
middle who is the Pennywise esque like villain, and to
have both of those again, like to say, Craiger can
play in both boats, it's crazy, Like it's crazy that
he can do that and keep us there.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Well. Also, what I've been really happy to see is like,
and obviously you know on this podcast people who listen
to it, well, no, I have many controversial opinions, and
often I'm not, you know, like having the same take
as everyone else. This was a movie where I came
out of it and I was like, oh shit, this
is like it's basically like a masterpiece, Like it's so good.
It's got it's critiques, but I have critiques some pretty
(32:21):
much every movie I think is a masterpiece. And I
was like, I love it. Are other people gonna love it?
So like the one hundred percent good reviews on Rotten
Tomatoes and stuff, I was just like, Okay, I was like,
this is the other thing I think that Kreiger can do.
The Barbarian hinted at, but Weapons absolutely kind of cements
(32:42):
he is playing in an almost like Stephen King esque
space of like familiar America, whether it's in it like
La or Detroit or here in this kind of suburban neighborhood.
He plays with these kind of places and I deals
that we understand and then shocks us when we follow
(33:05):
him on that journey. And I think, especially with Weapons,
I think part of the reason that people is speaking
to people is it's completely original, but it also feels
akin to something you've seen before because of kind of
the way he plays with Americana, and.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
It feels very much realistically suburban. It's not like inauthentic
in what it's doing. Having Archer being like a contractor
as well, who has blueprints to the entire town. It's
such a smart little way of giving us like a
geographical look at everything that's happening where I know, sometimes
movies lose the actual setting and it's hard to kind
(33:42):
of follow around where you are where I think like
it's such a small detail where he has the map
to the town, but it reveals so much and it
makes things so much easier from a storytelling perspective. So
I think like that is a point to Greger and
just to say he's thinking about every little thing that
could happen, where once again, we've seen our fair share
of horror movies where it's just roll with it, like
(34:04):
to worry about.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
It, so like you know, oh, somebody, like a cool
teenage girl gets you know, I feel like that's very
kind of could be very Freddy versus Jason kind of
vibes where somebody just like shows up and they're like,
I've got the blueprints, my dad had these or something.
But he manages to do it in a way that
it feels like it adds to what we know of
our character and also as well, it has that feeling
of like, yeah, he's a contract he has all the
(34:26):
blueprints in the town, but we also know he's this
really controlling guy who needs to know everything's going on.
So there's an element to it where in this situation
it's a positive, but in another situation why he has
those could be sinister as well. And I love the
way that they play around with those expectations throughout the movie.
Even once we know about Gladys and we still don't
(34:48):
really know who can be trusted, and because of the
way her magic works, no one can because she can
end up, you know, controlling them. Okay, we're going to
go to some messages from us sponsors, and when we
are we're going to talk about like how we feel
this sets Creger up in the landscape of kind of
great modern horror Diarthea and we're back. So yeah, let's
(35:24):
talk about Cregor because I feel like Barbarian and you
follow up with this, this establishes you as a as
a very powerful kind of new voice in horror and
also just in in cinematic film like film storytelling.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
It's interesting, especially because he is his next movie is
resid Evil, Like we're getting another resid Evil reboot and
that's coming from Creigor, And part of me is like, ah, God,
I wish you just kept doing original stuff because it's
what you just said, You've just knocked out of the
Park two times in a row. So I want to
see you how many boundaries can you push? Like where's
(36:02):
your next movie gonna go? And the other half of
me is really happy that's happening in a Resident Evil
sandbox because I like listen. I like the Paul W.
S Anderson movies for action movies, like they are goofy
their action, that's what they are. I like Welcome to
Ratkon City.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Actually, I think too.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Johannascarts is a great director, and it's really good. It
gets back to the games, like.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
It's very like classic. It's just like a fun B movie,
which is what for most of us Resident Evil probably is,
and as we imagine it in a movie. I just
thought it was so fun. I thought the cost had
so much chemistry. I thought the needle drops were great.
I thought the horror was good. But I also get
it in an era of Hereditary and Midsummer A lot
of people watch a movie like that and they go, Okay,
(36:43):
but what's the point, Like what does it mean? You know?
Whereas we know that can go over a spectrum, So
to them bring in someone like Craiger and hopefully give
him full control, right, that's very interesting thing.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Because he said it's gonna be by the games. But like,
also when you see something like weapons, I mean, one
of the things that I immediately think of is the brutality.
Like there is so much good brutality in weapons, and
while it's not that often, it is so impactful used
there there are There's this scene where the child we
(37:19):
haven't even called that, like, sorry, pull out, kid, I'm
gonna I had it up for a second.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
I'll find it. No, no, I'm finding it now. Don't worry.
Let's let's play in that little boy. He did such
a good job. Good job to that.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Carrie Christopher, that's what it is, Carrie.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Christopher, whose name in the movie is Alex. Yes, Yes,
So you have Alex played by Carrie Christopher, and.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
He is basically sitting at a dinner table with Gladys
and his parents. His parents have been possessed, whatever we
want to say, and Gladys sets them on themselves and
they just start stabbing themselves in the face of the
fork over and over again and so horrific. While it's
not the bloodiest scene of the movie, it is the
one that got me the most of this child screaming
for his parents to just stop harming them. So I
(38:01):
think there are so many things that Craiger understands as
a horror filmmaker that it is not just about, you know,
an evil dead type of movie where you have to
go over the top all the time. What unsettles and
what disturbs in this movie is thematic and powerful from
whether it's preying on your childhood and like your wonder
and like kind of destroying innocence or giving you the
(38:23):
outright oh yeah, now it's all wis shit, like now
we are in the witch trenches and like going out
that stuff. I think it all works in man, like
the brutality of the payoff, especially though I'm like, oh
I see it's so gory.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
It's so gory and so good and so cathartic, which
I think a lot of times. Something else I like
about this movie, and kind of the approach that Craiga
took care is like scary kid movies, right, they are
often kind of a representation of the fear of parenthood
or the fear of losing control, and that's definitely in
this movie. But also I feel like often the kids
(38:58):
are like, you are just evil and you're gonna have
to die. Right, whether it's like your Midwich Cuckoos or
kind of stuff like that. And so I kind of
love that here the kids get to have a heroic
moment and it's a brutally heroic moment, and I just
think it works so well. I also think interestingly the
visualization of Gladys and of Alex when he represents her
(39:24):
in this kind of these nightmares that people keep having.
I want to see after that, Like I want to
see how Zach imagines a zombie, Like let him imagine
these different kind of zombies in a different visual way
that's still representative. I yeah, I'm definitely in the same
space as you where I'm very excited for him to
(39:44):
take on Resident Evil, but I also want him to
not do it and just keep making movies like this,
which is also you know, that's how I felt about
the Philippoop brothers doing Street Fighter. It's like, I couldn't
think of a better pair to do it. But then
when they were like, hey, it doesn't work, we want
to make this weird like backyard wrestling documentary, I was like, yeah,
I was like thank you. I was like, that's that's
what I that's what I need.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
But even mentioning that payoff really quickly. I just love
the idea that it is a heroic moment. You are
one hundred percent correct, Like the kids have been captured
this whole time, they have been stashed away in a basement.
But it's also the idea of like the sins of
the parents and the adults and the way that they
failed the children h still weighing heavily on them because
(40:29):
while they do get their heroism, then they get the
takedown Gladys, they have to live with that memory for
the rest of their lives. Like that is still ingrained
in them. And it's that creepy narration at the beginning
of the end. It's just a child's voice and you
just hear her talking about like some of the kids
even started talking a year later, and and that just
ingrained trauma. And even though it is it's the payoff
(40:53):
we want, and it's the payoff that Gladys deserves, the
children still lose in the end, and they still have
to like live with that fact. All of that working
in like again going back to the idea that Craiger
thinks of everything, it's not just payoff, boom done, We're over.
There's no grand moment where it's like everyone just goes
home and we're fine, Like, no, everyone is still broken.
At the end of the TV there was still.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Like fremely fucked up. Like after that, it's like understandably
and again, so something that I'm I'm I'm working on
a theory that Craiger did not fully agree with me,
and I'm like, that's fine, because that's the joy of
being the filmmakers. You are the author. But I do
feel like I was like, I feel like he's kind
of he's he's making these almost like American like suburban
(41:38):
folk horror movies. Even with Barbarian, it's playing on these
ideas of like the horror underneath suburbia and the idea.
But instead of we were talking about this, me and
him because he was cracking me up. He was like, well,
you know, in a folk horror movie, I feel like
there's always like one person who comes in and then
they change everything, you know. And I was like, well,
Barbarian definitely, you know, has that. And it more like
(42:00):
she's going into this space where there's this kind of
culture and horror that she doesn't understand it in the basement,
And I was like, but it feels like you're kind
of peeling back this idea of like what if all
over America you could have a map and Zach is
just doing like a different horror movie in each city.
I was like, I'm really feeling it. He was like, yeah,
(42:21):
but what about in weapons? And I was like, well
there is you know, we couldn't do spoilers because it's
a drunket and that's how they are sometimes, and we
were like, well, you know. I was like, there is
someone who comes in and changes everything, and he was
like I don't know, and I was like, well there is,
and then like two minutes in he was like, oh
my god. He was like I really actually like didn't remember.
And I was like, you know, but what do you
(42:42):
think about kind of like do you I feel like
this and Barbarian are so of a piece that that
could really continue throughout his career, this kind of exploration
of like America and this kind of supernatural underpinnings and
kind of the horrors that we don't see. But do
you think, like with Resident Evil post Resident Evil, he's
(43:02):
a very unexpected filmmaker, So do you think do you
expect to see these themes continue or do you think
he's going to go somewhere completely different.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
I think the assumption is that they will continue because
he has now had two chances to tell stories that are,
you know, both personal and messed up, and they have
really steered hardcore into horror. I like, I love the
idea of what you're talking about of these movies being
in the same universe and just like the world being
represented through horror and how messed up it is socially,
(43:33):
because there's like a Quibi show. When Quibi was a thing,
I think it was like fifty States of Scare or
something like that, and it was every state had a
different scare attached to it and that was the episode.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Different folk horror. It was a different like folkloric kind
of thing. Yeah, exactly, really spooky ones and like.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Yeah, that was great. But like I envision that for
like Zach Kraiger's America, you know, like basically yeah, be like.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
That, like you know, in fifty years, getting like the
box set of.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Kind of all his messed up little takes on Suburbia. Yeah,
that's my hope. I mean, that's the thing any director
can veer in any moment. I mean, yeah, we wouldn't
have Halloween without David Gordon Green going to it, Jordan
Peel abandoned in comedy to do it like.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
Becoming Uponestly, Zach Craig.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Could do the opposite, you know, like he can go
right back to comedy at any point. But no, I
think you don't make a movie like Barbarian or Weapons
without really effing loving horror, Like that's that's just what
it is.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah, well, just before, thank you so much for joining me.
But you mentioned this a bit earlier about some of
the great festival movies you've watched. You review films all
over the place, You watch all kinds of movies. What
are summer What are like your three best underseen horrors
or horrors people should keep an eye out for as
they head into the rest of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
I know. So this movie called Touch Me, that is
it is a love story. It is horror. It is
basically the recreator somehow Addison Haymen made a he ti
horror movie.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
And thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
The practical effects are so good, it's so much fun.
Olivia Taylor Dudley and lou Taylor Pucci are going crazy
on screen. So I Touch Me is when you want
to look out for. I dropping this week is a
movie called Descendant and it is a sci fi film
produced by Benson Moorehead and Dave Lost and for Ross
Stick and it is once again I mentioned it before,
but like playing around with grief and themes of grief
(45:24):
and things of that nature. So that was I'm not
usually a sci fi like alien kind of guy, and
I'm not saying it is aliens one hundred percent, but
there's definitely a little Little Green Men element to it,
and it won me over. So that's I think it's
a big boo of confidence. And then I just saw
a movie I'm like a South Korean horror guy one
hundred percent, and they tend to be a lot of times,
(45:45):
I'm sure, as you know as well intense Southean horror
goals place.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Very intense, either emotionally or visually or whichever version. We've
talked a lot about some of them more entries. So yeah,
tell us about this.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
One covering Fantasia right now, wrapping on the coverage. And
there's a movie called Holy Night Demon Hunters, I believe,
and it stars Don Lee and it is goofy action
as a as a South Korean horror movie, and basically
him and his team of demon Hunters have to like
solve this entire occult plot blah blah blah, keep things
(46:20):
like very very bland there. But he's just don Lee
still just smacking the crap at a Demon's like that's
the whole movie. Is him just being like, oh, like,
there's the professional over here, who is the exorcist. There's
a professional here who's the cam quarder. And then Don
Lee just backhanding demons, just straight up backhanding demons. So
I was like, yeah, that's me. I like it.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
What famously for our MCU fans play Gilgamesh in the
Eternals and movie everybody knows. I love and also I
love the fact that this movie Holy Night Demon Hunters.
The production company is Big Punch Pictures.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
I want to wonder who, Yeah, wonder who came up
with that?
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Who came up with that?
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Matt?
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Where can people find you? Where can they follow you? Plug?
Plug plug?
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah, you can find me, Matt Donado at Dinato bomb
d O, n Ato b O m B and most places.
It's gonna be blue Sky, Instagram and letterbox for now.
Playing around TikTok a little bit so building that up.
And yeah, you can also listen to my podcast, Certified
Forgotten that I co host, and it is a horror
movie podcast about horror movies with ten or less critic reviews,
(47:27):
and we try to focus and highlight the movies that
have been lost to eternity. We have people like Rosyon
who bring hell Raiser sequels that I want to see.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Hey, hell Raiser, hell World. I believe we did, which
is the it's the hell Raiser computer game internet rave
movie which.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
Has starring Henry Cavill.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
So I'm like, you got to listen to the episode
that the movie is so fun, also has a crazy
twist that I feel like if it was nowadays would
have been a bit more respected. But yeah, that's such
a I love what you guys do there. You'll love
the you guys still have the site right with people's
pieces about those movies. I wrote about one of my
favorite movies, an old nineties another internet horror movie. I
(48:09):
believe it's called brain Scan. I think it's called Yeah
Edward Furlong, who I love really great weird stuff. So yeah,
and I appreciate you joining us to talk about this movie,
which I think my gut says is gonna be a
big hit. I think I think it's gonna catch that
word of mouth vibe. I think people are gonna want
to see it. I think it's got enough scary moments,
so people are gonna be talking about it. So yeah,
(48:30):
hopefully we'll get to be talking about more big horror
movies as we head into fall, and on the next
episode of Extra Vision, we're diving into news news news, news,
news news. That's the episode. Thanks for listening, guys, Bye
bye x ray Vision is hosted by Jason Concepcion and
(48:53):
Rosie Night and is a production of iHeart Podcast. Our
executive producers are Joel Menique and Aaron korfm Our Supervising
producer is Abu Safar. Our producers are Common Laurent Dean
Jonathan and Fay wag.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Our theme song is by Brian Vasquez, with alternate theme
songs by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Special thanks to Soul Rubin, Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and
Heidi our discord moderator.
Warning. Today's episode contains spoilers for Zach Creggor's Weapons, which
is a very scary movie. So either go and watch
it first, or if you're too scared, listen to us
talk about it and then you can decide whether or
not you want to go see it. But it is
really scary. Hello. I'm Rosie Knight, and welcome back to
(00:32):
X ray Vision, the podcast where we dive deep into
your favorite shows, movies, and pop culture, as well as
some comics because you know I love those. We are
here at iHeart Podcast where we'll bring bringing new episodes
every Tuesday and Thursday, the summer's biggest movies every Friday,
and news on Saturday. And today is Friday, which means
we are in the popcorn pop out talking about Oh Baby,
(00:55):
Zach Creig's new movie Weapons, So we are going to
share our non spoiler thoughts. Then we're going to dig
deep into the movie and what we think about it,
and to do that, I am introducing a guest co host,
a wonderful pal of mine who is also a fantastic
film critic who you might have read at Bloody Disgusting
or Fangoria and is also behind the very fun certified Forgotten,
(01:18):
where you can find thoughts and podcast episodes on movies
that maybe no one else remembers, and so you know,
I love being on that site and it is Matt Donato,
thank you so much for joining me today on X
ray Vision. How you doing that?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I am doing great, And thank you for having me
here to talk about some weapons.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
It is so fun. I'm very glad that you're going
to be here to talk about it with me, because
this is a crazy movie and I am really really
happy with how positive the feedback has been so far,
because I was not one hundred percent sure that would
be the case. I didn't know where this was going
to land for people. But I'm really excited. I loved
your review of it, and I was super stoked you
(01:57):
could join us. So let's get it. We're gonna start
with some non spoiler thoughts. So, Matt, I'm gonna ask
you what, let's go back do Zach's kind of big
breakout debut. What were your thoughts on Barbarian? Where are
you a Barbarian fan?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, I'm high on Barbarian. I do think it is
a fantastic debut. It really came out the gate and
announced Kraiger as this just force of horror storytelling that
doesn't really play by any rules, and I feel like
that's something that's hard to replicate. And we'll get into
obviously when we talk about weapons. But for Barbarian itself,
it's very twisty. It's very like does a really good
(02:34):
job of concealing those twists as well, because I'm sure
you know we're both horror fancy here. So we've seen
our share of movies that try to throw the curveball
and it just doesn't work, and yet Zach Kreger pulls
it off like multiple times in the same movie. Plus
that payoff is just something that I Number one, you're
not expecting. Number two is just for the books. I mean,
over the last decade, we know how studio horrors become
(02:54):
a little more predictable, not bad, like I like my
studio horror. I'm not a Blumhouse hater or anything by
that means, but Barbarian was just different, and Barbarian was
just fantastic. So for me, I came into this really
high already on Zach Gregor and Barbarian, So it was
a little bit of a lofty hype for weapons to
live up to.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, I agree, that's actually what I was going to
ask you about next, because I too. I saw Barbarian
at a really funny fan screening where like none of
us knew what it was going to be about. It
was it like the Little Mel in Hollywood, you know,
the Mel and Westward and when it had that kind
of famous smash cut now and you end up, you know,
in La everyone in the cinema was like, what the
(03:35):
fuck is going on? Like, how do you tell a
story like this? How does this connect? And the way
that it plays where the first kind of thirty minutes
of Barbarian are like this terrifying kind of like interpersonal thriller,
and then you know the justin long stuff is so
funny and just it's Yeah, I loved it so much.
I super producer Joelle and I we showed it to
(03:57):
our friend Danny. It was one of the funny experiences
to watch someone else not know what's going to happen
and kind of get to watch their reactions. So I
love that. But yeah, going in to weapons, kind of
what were your hopes for it after this, because, like
you said, there's one of the best horror movies of
the last kind of ten years.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
The hopes, like I said, are very high. And you know,
the hope specifically of what I wanted from Weapons was
more of that originality because you know Zach Greger, you know,
painting himself into a corner for better or worse to say, like,
you know, he comes out with this fantastic film that
we're talking about Barbarian, But then is that sophomore slove
going to happen? Is the next movie? And be able
(04:38):
to do that? Can he pull off the same kind
of storytelling that is both fractured but revealing and really
hit us with another one of those payoffs. So there
was a lot on the line, and it's not that
I didn't think it could be achieved. But again, we've
been doing this for how long and we've seen his
filmmakers right.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
And also as well, you know that Barbarian had this
crazy kind of production route and got stuck in that
weird like twentieth century to Disney change and was it
going to get made? And then you have you know,
Weapons is like a WB Studio horror, like they got
a lot of money behind it.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, I was going to say, and not only that,
but like it was the entire bidding war, like Jordan
Peele literally fired his management company because they lost the
bidding war for weapons, and I think it was thirty
thirty seven million or ten million going to Creigor directly,
like off the bat before. I think it was even
before the script was and it was just literally like
a speck, and it was like, here's where we're going.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
A lot of sense actually, because I was also reading
yesterday about how Cregor had had to recast the entire
movie with Weapons because he lost Pager of Pascaldi to scheduling,
and he was like, oh, this is a totally different
movie without him. So even this has had its kind
of interesting stuff. So then, how did you feel, Let's
do before we dive in, we'll do a little non spoiler.
(05:55):
How did you feel when you came out of weapons
and you'd seen it. What were your kind of non
spoiler thoughts.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I felt relieved because of the hype we were talking about.
I felt excited because Craiger proved now twice that he
can work with advanced storytelling telling methods in the horror genre.
It's not just a spooky, scary acting. It was funny
like this with Josh Brolin has said about it too.
He's like, I love this movie because I reminded him
(06:21):
he was in horror movies before. He kind of got
like literally he was like, oh, that's right. I worked
with your Hooven and I worked with Del Toro. Oh
my god. But you know what he said is like
he himself was so impressed with Zach Creigor as a
filmmaker because he's like, this is this is his second
and he's like a veteran ready and just the idea
that like of what what this movie achieved and it
lived up to all those lofty highs we.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Were talking about, So I really did that.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Non spoilers, and it's just the payoffs there. It's it's
it's action, it's comedy, it's horror, it's drama, it's it's everything.
It's a total package kind of horror film.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
He's unbelievably well versed in kind of how to play
with all those different genres too, which feels insane. But
when you're watching this especially you know the first kind
of I say, first third of the movie, when it's
very much in its mystery kind of bag, you really
feel like, oh, you're watching like a prestige like Hollywood
thriller because you have these actors like Josh Brilin, you
(07:18):
have Julia Gana, you know these it feels like there
is a heaviness and like a seriousness to the movie
that we don't often get in genre. But it still
manages to have those like playful, strange reveals. And he's
so good at reimagining kind of or reimagining the supernatural
(07:39):
in a way that feels like really really cool. Let's
we'll go to a quick ad break, and then when
we come back, we will talk spoilers. So if you
don't want to hear spoilers, guys, you can. You can
stop listening now and then come back when you've seen
the movie or when you've been too scared to watch
the movie and you want to come.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Back to it.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
And we're back, okay, Matt, let's try and let's try.
And Weapons is kind of like barbarian I feel like,
what if you try to, like do a detailed recap,
you would sound insane, But what is what's the if
you're pitching weapons to somebody, to a friend, to a
(08:32):
colleague who maybe doesn't check this out, Like, what's your pitch?
How do you describe the movie's uh, and we're going
spoiler right, this is spoilss Okay, this is like full territory.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
It is. It is a little bit of Tarantino and
the Coen Brothers trying to do a suburban Witchcraft story
that is about broken people finding meaning in nothing and
having to survive somehow.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yeah, I love it, if that makes sense. I think
that's really great because I think that the thing that
people are probably going to be surprised about with this
movie is despite the strangeness and the funniness, there is
like this very like deep beating heart of kind of
this like loss, not making enough of your life. What
(09:24):
does it mean to lose the thing that means the
most to you? But also like what is the thing
that means the most to you? I think the just
Browling character has a really interesting arc of kind of
realizing like, oh, I guess, I guess I do love
my kid. Now my kid isn't around, you know. And
I think that is like such an interesting through line
of this movie of people who it's almost like they
(09:47):
sort of don't know what they have in their suburban, calm,
you know, boring life until as the trailers has let
people know. And I think has intrigued audiences. Everywhere, an
entire class kids goes missing. Apart from one there's just
one kid who is in the class who comes back,
and they all leave in the middle of the night
(10:08):
two seventeen, and then you kind of unravel this paranoia
and strangeness that is going on in the town until
it is revealed that at the center of this is
a witch, which I just thought was so great because
also when we were all guessing about what this was about,
(10:30):
I think there was a lot of alien guesses. There
was definitely a lot of kind of like, you know,
maybe it's a kind of you know, pod people kind
of thing. Maybe. So what were your what was your
biggest theory going into weapons.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I was thinking more of the lines of a cult
like activity because of the suburban setting and the way
that horror filmmakers, you know, typically toy around with like Pleasantville,
let's say, and the idea of, like you said, the
idyllic like I grew up in a Jersey suburb, And
to me, the most interesting commentary on suburbia is the
idea that it is like a little cult like you know,
when I go home and visit my hometown. Now it
(11:08):
does feel like I don't belong there, and like everyone's
in some club that like I'm not a part of.
So to me, I don't know why, but I went
with some kind of like the parents are in on it,
real fucked up scenario, Like that's that's kind of where
my mind went, especially because it's Zach Craiger and what
I saw he did in Barbaria, and I'm like, oh,
he's gonna push this hard.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
He's not afraid to do something that's like a little
bit more boundary pushing.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
And I will say where we end up with the
Witchcraft like it's funny because it's more quote unquote predictable
than Barbarian. I would say this movie's a little more
straightforward despite the chopped up chapter storytelling, but that's no
less impactful. I would say this story. Craiger has said
this out loud that like this was inspired by a
(11:53):
tragedy in his life, Like if you follow the Whitest Kids,
you know you know that Craiger lost a dear friend
and that's where weapons came from, and that's why it
goes back to that whole broken people. So I really
like that this movie has at heart and through line
like rooted in that.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
I actually think that you touch on something that I
really love about both this and Bring Her Back, which
I was like a huge fan of by the Philippoe
Brothers who we had on the pod and everything, and
I just thought that movie was incredible. I think that
we're getting movies that are kind of, I guess, evolving
from that whole you know, horror is grief kind of
(12:28):
throw the thing that people now act as if it
is like a trope in every movie. You're trying to
make a movie serious, you know, you make it about grief.
But the funny thing is we're now getting people who
are incredible filmmakers who are like, well, okay, that's that's
all well and good, but that can't be it, Like
we have to like what does it mean? What does
that grief do to you? What is it like? What
is And again Philippoe Brothers would Bring Her Back, they
(12:50):
had a really they lost someone who was really close
in their life, a young kid, and that completely changed
the movie. And I think that these kind of person
stories are expanding our idea of kind of what horror
can be. Because obviously something like Midsummer you know, that
was something that Ariasta spoke about being you know, kind
(13:12):
of his own treaties on him being a bad boyfriend. Ironically,
I'm like, I love that. It's like, the craziest thing
is what if I just killed myself in this movie
because I was such a bad partner. But like, you
know that kind of cliche almost of like, oh well,
if it's about emotions, it's like and it's about loss,
then it has to be really serious. But especially with weapons.
(13:35):
Zach Craig is like, no, Like, what I want you
to feel is the strangeness of what it feels like
to lose someone in the way that the rest of
the world completely keeps going on, but you are frozen
in that moment and yeat me going into it. I
definitely was thinking in a cult type situation, maybe some
kind of take on the satanic panic, because you do
(13:56):
have this idea of the town that is going to
go in. It's like they don't know what's going on.
They all look towards Miss Gandhi, who's played by Julia Ghana,
who plays the teacher who was the teacher of this classroom.
It starts to seem like they're gonna blame her. They're
blaming her, but as it evolves. I think the thing
that works so well for me and when it comes
(14:17):
to those kind of surprises and twists, is actually more
about which characters connect and who kind of teams up
to solve this mystery. I found that to be really
really interesting. I think they did a great job. I
have to say I love Pedro Pascal, don't we all?
But I think this cast is the perfect cast for
this movie. There's something you know, old and anwrikers in
(14:39):
this in another unbelievable role after iron Heart, where he
just totally outperformed what was written for him, and here
he gets some of the grossest, best weirdest moments too.
So when you finally get to that reveal and we
kind of learned that they're the one kid who survived
his you know aunt moved in and she's very obviously
(15:03):
a funny, creepy old witch. I love the way they
visualize that, which is kind of this hyper glam clown
esque makeup, like really unusual and different from what we've
seen before. When the witchcraft moment came and they kind
of make the reveal of how these people are being murdered,
which is this magic that we never get over explained,
(15:25):
which I love. But it's very simple, very folk horrorish,
which is, you know, hair wrapped around a twig and
then if you snap it, she can set the children
on any of the adults in the town or anyone
in the town who who she has that the hair of.
What was your feeling when that was revealed?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
So like I go back to where it's a safer storytelling, No,
I think I would say, like I would describe as
a little safer and like you said, it's supernatural. It's
really playing around in these like paralormal stuff but start
not parallem but like witchcraft. But I was excited once again.
I came back to this because witchcraft itself is always
portrayed in a certain way, like think of most popular
(16:06):
as recent like the Witch or something like that, the
vich if you've pronounced it that way, but the bitch.
But like it's it is puritanical, it's period like Salem
Witch Trials kind of stuff. We don't really get a
lot of witchcraft movies set in the suburbs. So that
was the twist. That was where I thought Craiger really
pulled it off to go, all right, we're going to
(16:28):
use like mythology and folk Lord, it's all going to
be there, but we're going to destroy like a suburban
town from within, and we're just going to like see
it descend into chaos. And you know, I do want
to go back to really quickly what you said about
the whole like being in grief horror in that moment
where you know, Hereditary obviously ushered in this entire movement
of what people have dubbed trauma porn or trauma horror,
(16:50):
whatever you want to call it, and I like, I
think what you're saying is exactly right where it got
a bad rap for a while, because the horror genre
is about movements. You know, there's a popular theme at
the time, and every studio, every filmmaker is going to
try to replicate that because that's what's popular. Hey, hereditaryan Gangbusters,
So we all have to do our Hereditary. There were
great examples, there were bad examples, but it's also been
(17:12):
a while since Hereditary at this point. Yeah, so a
movie like Weapons to me, you know, I think as
we dissect the horror genre specifically, like you know, we
were very in tune with horror and everything that's going
on with it, and I'm always thinking, like, what's the
next movement, And for a while I thought it was
going to be slashers coming back, because obviously Scream brought
that back, and so many other things like slashers internationally
(17:34):
have been churned up the whole time. Go watch the
conference on Fli's go watch that, Like, I have so
many slashers.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And even like when that big Indonesian wave of hurricane,
they were kind of leaning into that a little bit
more like there's more classic kind of there's almost like
Evil Dead esque like comedic ones, but you still have
that slasher notation of like there's a house that you're
in and you've returned back somewhere and then suddenly you'll
start getting killed off one by one. Queen of black
magic and stuff. Yeah, I definitely think Scream was heralding
(18:06):
a return to that, especially because those movies got better
as they like five was great. I liked it. It was
a great return. I thought they did some really silly,
fun fifth Horror stuff, but by six you're getting like
a brutal, like kind of super violent version of what
a slash it could be. And I was like, oh,
maybe this is what slashes look like post Saul.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Post Well and like we just got hard eyes. We
just so like I thought that's where we were going
with all this. But now that I've seen a bunch
of festival movies this year, and there are movies like
Touch Me and Descend It, which is coming out this week,
which are reimagining, like you said, grief horror and the
way you just said, you know, bring bring Her Back,
and Weapons. They're all in the grief horror realm, but
(18:47):
they're elevating it in the way something different that is different, right,
Like we're not just anymore where oh, the vampire's depression,
we get it, like we've done this before, we understand
at this point. Now we're just getting these filmmakers who
are they are digging deeper. It's not just about the
vampire's depression. It's probably very fucked up movie about depression
and it goes places. And I think Weapon is a
(19:08):
great distillation of all of that, Like Weapons is where
horror is headed in large and the idea that we're
still going to be in that hole, like we're not
getting rid of the grief element, like that is look
at the world around us, you're influenced by that.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
The universal thing that's why, you know, hereditary everyone's had
an argument with their mom, like everyone's been to a
spooky house. You know, there are elements to it that,
and obviously with hereditary, grief, losing someone in your family,
the guilt you feel, those things are all universal. I
think it's kind of similar the way that, like you said,
(19:43):
there's bad examples, there's good examples. You know, my friends
who's an incredible cartoonist, Bianca Eunice was one of the
first people who kind of ever told me about what
they perceived as post get Out, you know, the Jordan
Peel industrial complex, And that wasn't to do with Jordan
and his films. It was to do with other people
trying to make them right. And so I think that
(20:04):
with Grief Horror, you ended up in a situation where
some studios or smaller places were basically just saying, like, well,
just say it about that. It wasn't even necessarily about it.
They were reimagining films to add that element, whereas something
like weapons, you feel like you are digging into Zach
Kregor's kind of brain and how he perceives stuff like this.
(20:27):
And I think as well, I remember at the screening
that I went to of Barbarian. I was really blown
away because so Ash crossanm was there doing a Q
and A. And one of the things that Zach could
revealed was like the inspiration of Barbarian was he had
read a book about how women are supposed to stay
safe when men are around, and it's all these rules
(20:49):
that you're given, and so he wanted he thought, well,
what if I make a situation where a woman is
basically ignoring every single red flag because she's trying to
be polite and she feels like she can't do that?
And I thought that was such an interesting in to
a movie that then kind of goes off in all
these interesting directions, but still with the Justin Long character
brings it back to that. And I think that here
(21:11):
we get through the Josh Broling character especially, and then
through the you know, the kid who is the relative,
let's say, of the witch, we get these really interesting
deeper explorations. I mean, something I loved about Bring Her Back,
that I talked to the guys about and that I
didn't get to talk to Zach about because you know,
(21:32):
Junket times or Junket times. But this also felt like
another movie to me. That's about like how scary it
is to be a kid like you're It's like and
to rely on all these adults and have to trust adults.
And how when you're like ten, if an adult comes
to your house and says, well, I'm in charge of
your house now your parents aren't, well, you go okay,
because you're ten, you know. And I think that is
(21:53):
something that I'm really enjoying at the moment in this
wave of horror, is kind of this look at like
a way that adults can let kids down and can
kind of put them in these dangerous situations and how
scary that is. I found that to be really interesting.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, and I mean it extends even further, like when
looking at weapons. Let's say, going back to like the characters.
I mean, Julia Gardner's character I think is brilliant because
she's the school teacher where her entire class goes missing,
as you said, and she immediately becomes the scapegoat for
the towns. The idea of like, well, obviously it's you,
Like you're the person we trust as a teacher to
(22:30):
have our kids and basically like caretake for our kids
for all day. So obviously, like you're at fault. But
then you go back to her home life and like
she's an alcoholic and she is a mess, and she
is trying to like solve this as a detective who
has no power and the brokenness like being there. And
then Alden's character, you know, he's a cop and he's
(22:52):
also got his own baggage. Like everyone is just a
level of broken and messed up. That makes the investigation,
let's say that much better because like Brolin Archer, he's
he's just rage. He's yeah, he's furious and grief and
so many things. And talking to Brolin like that was
the first thing I asked him, you know, like you know,
I said him, like, hey, you're a father, Like how
(23:13):
do you approach a role like this and not like
dig in too deep or like become too fearful yourself.
And he's like, honestly, I've never played a character like this.
Because of that, He's like, I could not imagine this
happening to my children, so I didn't want to put
myself in that scenario. But he's like, I finally, you know,
I pushed myself to tackle that character because of it,
and like, yeah, I needed to express those emotions. I
(23:33):
needed to feel that, and he's like, I just yeah,
like how do you not how does that not become personal?
Speaker 1 (23:38):
So yeah, that's that's so funny. That was also like
my first question was like you are a dad, like
how did this feel? And he was like ended up
with a little tear in his eye. Like I think
the interesting thing to me as well is kind of
as someone who doesn't have kids, you know, I did
still I do still feel like when you know, I
have nieces and nephews and stuff. But I think that
(23:59):
there's a an interesting, like feral exploration of kind of
what parenting is, which obviously has also been really interesting
in movies like You Speak No Evil, you know, and
stuff like that, these kind of ideas of what does
it mean to be a parent and who are like
(24:19):
how do you be a good parent? And what do
you need to teach your kids? And I think like
throughout the years, kind of scary kid horror has often
touched on that, but I think this is one of
the most unexpectedly great scary kid horror movies that we've
had in like a long time.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
And it's funny because the kids are missing like that,
like the idea that it is a very much scary
kid horror movie, and there are elements where there's some
like nightmare classroom scenes that really mess with you.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Fucking the end of this movie, I think I felt
like it was very enjoyable and exciting and great, and
I was like cheering it on. But there are people
I've spoken to who were like legitimately shocked because at
the end of the movie, guys, the young boy who
is able, who is the you know, the nephew hypothetically
(25:09):
of this witch who has moved into town. He manages
to wrap her hair around the string and we get
the kids completely just eating her alive, like destroying her
in kind of the daylight of the town, and it
is really brutal, and it feels very cathartic and you're like, yeah,
like fuck, yeah, this is great. But for some people,
I think also terrifying because that's not how they perceive children.
(25:34):
That's also incredibly there are moments in this movie where
you feel like, like I said, you're watching a kind
of prestige mystery thriller, but there are moments where Olden peels,
you know, his face gets peeled off with a view
with a fruit peeler, you know, so that kind of balance.
What do you think is about Craig's filmmaking that kind
(25:56):
of makes that balance and juxtapisation work so well, because
it's very much what he did in Barbarian with the
kind of the head smash and then the beautiful lac.
He likes to keep us unsettled.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I think it's the character development specifically and letting these
performers really explore within their characters' emotions like this. I
think I said this before, but like, this doesn't feel
like your standard. The characters are just there to kind
of walk through a haunted house or if it's a slasher,
get killed off. This is very much a character piece
(26:31):
for a lot of the movie. Oh yeah, and I
think that is at times to the film's detriment a
little bit. I really like weapons, but I do think
there's a little bit of sag in the middle for
me where when it does turn into this idea of well,
it's a movie about perception because the event happens like
the event happens to the town, and we see it
(26:51):
from the perspective of different characters like they Basically it's
a chapter base and one chapter is archer At. One
chapter is like Julia Gardner's character. So I think the movie,
very briefly in the middle, gets a little lost in
showing us the same thing but from different angles. And
while that is interesting, it's a little bit of repetition
(27:13):
for me. But outside of that little moment, I think
Craiger does a brilliant job actually of letting the story
flesh itself out and letting the release of information be
like a slow drip versus giant reveal here and then
lull and giant reveal, Like everything is pretty much meticulous,
(27:33):
and everything is so calculated. Like even there's there's a
scene where it's a hallucination or a dream and Archer
sees in the sky this giant gun and it's it's
so cartoonish, but it's so good because the title weapons
is so misleading, and that alone is going to throw people.
And some people might ask at the end, like, well
(27:54):
why is it called weapons? Even at the end and
that little scene of the of the imaginary ak with
a clock on it of two seventeen and Archer just
staring at it like it's such a good throw because
you don't really know yet still and you're still being like,
is this gonna be like a gun commentary America.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Like what, that's definitely what you feel like. You're like, okay,
so is this about? You know, there's this incredible horror
ritter called Kirsten White, who who I love. She writes
all different kinds of stuff, but she wrote a book
called Hide about people who go into an old theme
park and are essentially, you know, hunted down by some
kind of mythical creature while they play hide and seek.
(28:33):
But it's really a commentary on gun violence and how
we just send our kids to these really dangerous places
every day and how that can happen to them. And
I was as soon as the gun came up, I'm like, okay,
so is that what this is about? Is this about
how we like send our kids to school and we
put them in this space that is perceived to be safe,
but really you really can end up in a situation
(28:55):
where there's only one kid left over. I don't think
those are like, I don't think it's a miss. I
think Zach knows what he's doing. It's almost like a
it's almost like a thematic red herring because I think
it is there and it's true. But when you see
that gun, you're just like, oh, Okay, this is what
the movie's about, and then you know, ten minutes later
it's like, oh no, that's not what it's about.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
But maybe because it's not long after I think where
we finally do like see the Witchcraft in full form.
But yeah, I think so, it's that element. It's the
way that he is able to, number one, tell this
story so eloquently with these characters who have meaning and
depth and they're all there. But then you do, you
get you get the gun moment where you said it
(29:35):
it's a red herring, and it puts you, It puts
you on the trail of something that is conceivable to
what this movie could be about and it completely is not.
And that way of convincing us, I think that's what
it is. He's able to convince us of what's happening
when it's completely not and a lot of films aren't
able to do that. You know, a lot of films
can't really hide behind their themes and their storytelling. They're
(29:56):
not as adept at that.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
That's a fantastic way of putting actually, because that's what
I think the biggest power of Barbarian was was he
convinced us what the movie was about in the first
you know, twenty five minutes and then suddenly you're like, oh, actually, uh,
this is a completely different film. So also, let's talk
about at the heart of it, we do have our witch,
(30:19):
Gladys Lily played by Amy Madigan, and like, what I
think is gonna go down as one of our best
kind of you know, exploitation, which kind of performances. Let's
talk a little bit about that. How did that work
for you?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
It is so good what she accomplishes, because it's what
the first vision that we see of her, I believe
is a is Julia Gardner's nightmare ye where she is
like basically coming out of her ceiling at her like
in one of those like jomb scare moments, but just
it's the pale makeup face, it's the really bad wig.
(30:55):
It's like the nylon jumpsuit too. Like everything about her
is so uns settling and surreal, Like her character alone
in the way she presents herself is it looks nothing
like the people in this serb in town, so like
she sticks out like a sore thumb, and yet nobody
is thinking about her. Everyone's too obsessed with their own
(31:16):
ideas and their own revenge arks. Let's say, to even
care about this insane clown looking person running around the
woods like it's happening.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
She looks like an evil clown, but that's just like
she's just like a weird old.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Lady, but she is. I think that performance is so
key to everything because for as much as weapons is
the grounded storytelling piece of what we've just said about
all these characters who have these things that they are
working through, it is also a crazy ass looking movie
and you have like you have the character in the
(31:50):
middle who is the Pennywise esque like villain, and to
have both of those again, like to say, Craiger can
play in both boats, it's crazy, Like it's crazy that
he can do that and keep us there.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Well. Also, what I've been really happy to see is like,
and obviously you know on this podcast people who listen
to it, well, no, I have many controversial opinions, and
often I'm not, you know, like having the same take
as everyone else. This was a movie where I came
out of it and I was like, oh shit, this
is like it's basically like a masterpiece, Like it's so good.
It's got it's critiques, but I have critiques some pretty
(32:21):
much every movie I think is a masterpiece. And I
was like, I love it. Are other people gonna love it?
So like the one hundred percent good reviews on Rotten
Tomatoes and stuff, I was just like, Okay, I was like,
this is the other thing I think that Kreiger can do.
The Barbarian hinted at, but Weapons absolutely kind of cements
(32:42):
he is playing in an almost like Stephen King esque
space of like familiar America, whether it's in it like
La or Detroit or here in this kind of suburban neighborhood.
He plays with these kind of places and I deals
that we understand and then shocks us when we follow
(33:05):
him on that journey. And I think, especially with Weapons,
I think part of the reason that people is speaking
to people is it's completely original, but it also feels
akin to something you've seen before because of kind of
the way he plays with Americana, and.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
It feels very much realistically suburban. It's not like inauthentic
in what it's doing. Having Archer being like a contractor
as well, who has blueprints to the entire town. It's
such a smart little way of giving us like a
geographical look at everything that's happening where I know, sometimes
movies lose the actual setting and it's hard to kind
(33:42):
of follow around where you are where I think like
it's such a small detail where he has the map
to the town, but it reveals so much and it
makes things so much easier from a storytelling perspective. So
I think like that is a point to Greger and
just to say he's thinking about every little thing that
could happen, where once again, we've seen our fair share
of horror movies where it's just roll with it, like
(34:04):
to worry about.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
It, so like you know, oh, somebody, like a cool
teenage girl gets you know, I feel like that's very
kind of could be very Freddy versus Jason kind of
vibes where somebody just like shows up and they're like,
I've got the blueprints, my dad had these or something.
But he manages to do it in a way that
it feels like it adds to what we know of
our character and also as well, it has that feeling
of like, yeah, he's a contract he has all the
(34:26):
blueprints in the town, but we also know he's this
really controlling guy who needs to know everything's going on.
So there's an element to it where in this situation
it's a positive, but in another situation why he has
those could be sinister as well. And I love the
way that they play around with those expectations throughout the movie.
Even once we know about Gladys and we still don't
(34:48):
really know who can be trusted, and because of the
way her magic works, no one can because she can
end up, you know, controlling them. Okay, we're going to
go to some messages from us sponsors, and when we
are we're going to talk about like how we feel
this sets Creger up in the landscape of kind of
great modern horror Diarthea and we're back. So yeah, let's
(35:24):
talk about Cregor because I feel like Barbarian and you
follow up with this, this establishes you as a as
a very powerful kind of new voice in horror and
also just in in cinematic film like film storytelling.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
It's interesting, especially because he is his next movie is
resid Evil, Like we're getting another resid Evil reboot and
that's coming from Creigor, And part of me is like, ah, God,
I wish you just kept doing original stuff because it's
what you just said, You've just knocked out of the
Park two times in a row. So I want to
see you how many boundaries can you push? Like where's
(36:02):
your next movie gonna go? And the other half of
me is really happy that's happening in a Resident Evil
sandbox because I like listen. I like the Paul W.
S Anderson movies for action movies, like they are goofy
their action, that's what they are. I like Welcome to
Ratkon City.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Actually, I think too.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Johannascarts is a great director, and it's really good. It
gets back to the games, like.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
It's very like classic. It's just like a fun B movie,
which is what for most of us Resident Evil probably is,
and as we imagine it in a movie. I just
thought it was so fun. I thought the cost had
so much chemistry. I thought the needle drops were great.
I thought the horror was good. But I also get
it in an era of Hereditary and Midsummer A lot
of people watch a movie like that and they go, Okay,
(36:43):
but what's the point, Like what does it mean? You know?
Whereas we know that can go over a spectrum, So
to them bring in someone like Craiger and hopefully give
him full control, right, that's very interesting thing.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Because he said it's gonna be by the games. But like,
also when you see something like weapons, I mean, one
of the things that I immediately think of is the brutality.
Like there is so much good brutality in weapons, and
while it's not that often, it is so impactful used
there there are There's this scene where the child we
(37:19):
haven't even called that, like, sorry, pull out, kid, I'm
gonna I had it up for a second.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
I'll find it. No, no, I'm finding it now. Don't worry.
Let's let's play in that little boy. He did such
a good job. Good job to that.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Carrie Christopher, that's what it is, Carrie.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Christopher, whose name in the movie is Alex. Yes, Yes,
So you have Alex played by Carrie Christopher, and.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
He is basically sitting at a dinner table with Gladys
and his parents. His parents have been possessed, whatever we
want to say, and Gladys sets them on themselves and
they just start stabbing themselves in the face of the
fork over and over again and so horrific. While it's
not the bloodiest scene of the movie, it is the
one that got me the most of this child screaming
for his parents to just stop harming them. So I
(38:01):
think there are so many things that Craiger understands as
a horror filmmaker that it is not just about, you know,
an evil dead type of movie where you have to
go over the top all the time. What unsettles and
what disturbs in this movie is thematic and powerful from
whether it's preying on your childhood and like your wonder
and like kind of destroying innocence or giving you the
(38:23):
outright oh yeah, now it's all wis shit, like now
we are in the witch trenches and like going out
that stuff. I think it all works in man, like
the brutality of the payoff, especially though I'm like, oh
I see it's so gory.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
It's so gory and so good and so cathartic, which
I think a lot of times. Something else I like
about this movie, and kind of the approach that Craiga
took care is like scary kid movies, right, they are
often kind of a representation of the fear of parenthood
or the fear of losing control, and that's definitely in
this movie. But also I feel like often the kids
(38:58):
are like, you are just evil and you're gonna have
to die. Right, whether it's like your Midwich Cuckoos or
kind of stuff like that. And so I kind of
love that here the kids get to have a heroic
moment and it's a brutally heroic moment, and I just
think it works so well. I also think interestingly the
visualization of Gladys and of Alex when he represents her
(39:24):
in this kind of these nightmares that people keep having.
I want to see after that, Like I want to
see how Zach imagines a zombie, Like let him imagine
these different kind of zombies in a different visual way
that's still representative. I yeah, I'm definitely in the same
space as you where I'm very excited for him to
(39:44):
take on Resident Evil, but I also want him to
not do it and just keep making movies like this,
which is also you know, that's how I felt about
the Philippoop brothers doing Street Fighter. It's like, I couldn't
think of a better pair to do it. But then
when they were like, hey, it doesn't work, we want
to make this weird like backyard wrestling documentary, I was like, yeah,
I was like thank you. I was like, that's that's
what I that's what I need.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
But even mentioning that payoff really quickly. I just love
the idea that it is a heroic moment. You are
one hundred percent correct, Like the kids have been captured
this whole time, they have been stashed away in a basement.
But it's also the idea of like the sins of
the parents and the adults and the way that they
failed the children h still weighing heavily on them because
(40:29):
while they do get their heroism, then they get the
takedown Gladys, they have to live with that memory for
the rest of their lives. Like that is still ingrained
in them. And it's that creepy narration at the beginning
of the end. It's just a child's voice and you
just hear her talking about like some of the kids
even started talking a year later, and and that just
ingrained trauma. And even though it is it's the payoff
(40:53):
we want, and it's the payoff that Gladys deserves, the
children still lose in the end, and they still have
to like live with that fact. All of that working
in like again going back to the idea that Craiger
thinks of everything, it's not just payoff, boom done, We're over.
There's no grand moment where it's like everyone just goes
home and we're fine, Like, no, everyone is still broken.
At the end of the TV there was still.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Like fremely fucked up. Like after that, it's like understandably
and again, so something that I'm I'm I'm working on
a theory that Craiger did not fully agree with me,
and I'm like, that's fine, because that's the joy of
being the filmmakers. You are the author. But I do
feel like I was like, I feel like he's kind
of he's he's making these almost like American like suburban
(41:38):
folk horror movies. Even with Barbarian, it's playing on these
ideas of like the horror underneath suburbia and the idea.
But instead of we were talking about this, me and
him because he was cracking me up. He was like, well,
you know, in a folk horror movie, I feel like
there's always like one person who comes in and then
they change everything, you know. And I was like, well,
Barbarian definitely, you know, has that. And it more like
(42:00):
she's going into this space where there's this kind of
culture and horror that she doesn't understand it in the basement,
And I was like, but it feels like you're kind
of peeling back this idea of like what if all
over America you could have a map and Zach is
just doing like a different horror movie in each city.
I was like, I'm really feeling it. He was like, yeah,
(42:21):
but what about in weapons? And I was like, well
there is you know, we couldn't do spoilers because it's
a drunket and that's how they are sometimes, and we
were like, well, you know. I was like, there is
someone who comes in and changes everything, and he was
like I don't know, and I was like, well there is,
and then like two minutes in he was like, oh
my god. He was like I really actually like didn't remember.
And I was like, you know, but what do you
(42:42):
think about kind of like do you I feel like
this and Barbarian are so of a piece that that
could really continue throughout his career, this kind of exploration
of like America and this kind of supernatural underpinnings and
kind of the horrors that we don't see. But do
you think, like with Resident Evil post Resident Evil, he's
(43:02):
a very unexpected filmmaker, So do you think do you
expect to see these themes continue or do you think
he's going to go somewhere completely different.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
I think the assumption is that they will continue because
he has now had two chances to tell stories that are,
you know, both personal and messed up, and they have
really steered hardcore into horror. I like, I love the
idea of what you're talking about of these movies being
in the same universe and just like the world being
represented through horror and how messed up it is socially,
(43:33):
because there's like a Quibi show. When Quibi was a thing,
I think it was like fifty States of Scare or
something like that, and it was every state had a
different scare attached to it and that was the episode.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Different folk horror. It was a different like folkloric kind
of thing. Yeah, exactly, really spooky ones and like.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Yeah, that was great. But like I envision that for
like Zach Kraiger's America, you know, like basically yeah, be like.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
That, like you know, in fifty years, getting like the
box set of.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Kind of all his messed up little takes on Suburbia. Yeah,
that's my hope. I mean, that's the thing any director
can veer in any moment. I mean, yeah, we wouldn't
have Halloween without David Gordon Green going to it, Jordan
Peel abandoned in comedy to do it like.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
Becoming Uponestly, Zach Craig.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Could do the opposite, you know, like he can go
right back to comedy at any point. But no, I
think you don't make a movie like Barbarian or Weapons
without really effing loving horror, Like that's that's just what
it is.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah, well, just before, thank you so much for joining me.
But you mentioned this a bit earlier about some of
the great festival movies you've watched. You review films all
over the place, You watch all kinds of movies. What
are summer What are like your three best underseen horrors
or horrors people should keep an eye out for as
they head into the rest of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
I know. So this movie called Touch Me, that is
it is a love story. It is horror. It is
basically the recreator somehow Addison Haymen made a he ti
horror movie.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
And thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
The practical effects are so good, it's so much fun.
Olivia Taylor Dudley and lou Taylor Pucci are going crazy
on screen. So I Touch Me is when you want
to look out for. I dropping this week is a
movie called Descendant and it is a sci fi film
produced by Benson Moorehead and Dave Lost and for Ross
Stick and it is once again I mentioned it before,
but like playing around with grief and themes of grief
(45:24):
and things of that nature. So that was I'm not
usually a sci fi like alien kind of guy, and
I'm not saying it is aliens one hundred percent, but
there's definitely a little Little Green Men element to it,
and it won me over. So that's I think it's
a big boo of confidence. And then I just saw
a movie I'm like a South Korean horror guy one
hundred percent, and they tend to be a lot of times,
(45:45):
I'm sure, as you know as well intense Southean horror
goals place.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Very intense, either emotionally or visually or whichever version. We've
talked a lot about some of them more entries. So yeah,
tell us about this.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
One covering Fantasia right now, wrapping on the coverage. And
there's a movie called Holy Night Demon Hunters, I believe,
and it stars Don Lee and it is goofy action
as a as a South Korean horror movie, and basically
him and his team of demon Hunters have to like
solve this entire occult plot blah blah blah, keep things
(46:20):
like very very bland there. But he's just don Lee
still just smacking the crap at a Demon's like that's
the whole movie. Is him just being like, oh, like,
there's the professional over here, who is the exorcist. There's
a professional here who's the cam quarder. And then Don
Lee just backhanding demons, just straight up backhanding demons. So
I was like, yeah, that's me. I like it.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
What famously for our MCU fans play Gilgamesh in the
Eternals and movie everybody knows. I love and also I
love the fact that this movie Holy Night Demon Hunters.
The production company is Big Punch Pictures.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
I want to wonder who, Yeah, wonder who came up
with that?
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Who came up with that?
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Matt?
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Where can people find you? Where can they follow you? Plug?
Plug plug?
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah, you can find me, Matt Donado at Dinato bomb
d O, n Ato b O m B and most places.
It's gonna be blue Sky, Instagram and letterbox for now.
Playing around TikTok a little bit so building that up.
And yeah, you can also listen to my podcast, Certified
Forgotten that I co host, and it is a horror
movie podcast about horror movies with ten or less critic reviews,
(47:27):
and we try to focus and highlight the movies that
have been lost to eternity. We have people like Rosyon
who bring hell Raiser sequels that I want to see.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Hey, hell Raiser, hell World. I believe we did, which
is the it's the hell Raiser computer game internet rave
movie which.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
Has starring Henry Cavill.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
So I'm like, you got to listen to the episode
that the movie is so fun, also has a crazy
twist that I feel like if it was nowadays would
have been a bit more respected. But yeah, that's such
a I love what you guys do there. You'll love
the you guys still have the site right with people's
pieces about those movies. I wrote about one of my
favorite movies, an old nineties another internet horror movie. I
(48:09):
believe it's called brain Scan. I think it's called Yeah
Edward Furlong, who I love really great weird stuff. So yeah,
and I appreciate you joining us to talk about this movie,
which I think my gut says is gonna be a
big hit. I think I think it's gonna catch that
word of mouth vibe. I think people are gonna want
to see it. I think it's got enough scary moments,
so people are gonna be talking about it. So yeah,
(48:30):
hopefully we'll get to be talking about more big horror
movies as we head into fall, and on the next
episode of Extra Vision, we're diving into news news news, news,
news news. That's the episode. Thanks for listening, guys, Bye
bye x ray Vision is hosted by Jason Concepcion and
(48:53):
Rosie Night and is a production of iHeart Podcast. Our
executive producers are Joel Menique and Aaron korfm Our Supervising
producer is Abu Safar. Our producers are Common Laurent Dean
Jonathan and Fay wag.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Our theme song is by Brian Vasquez, with alternate theme
songs by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Special thanks to Soul Rubin, Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and
Heidi our discord moderator.
Hosts And Creators
Jason Concepcion
Rosie Knight
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