LE MONDE'S OPINION – MUST-SEE

At a time when Hollywood is producing little beyond remakes, franchises or formulaic sequels, the horror genre od one of the few in which something truly original can emerge. Zach Cregger, who made his directorial debut with Barbarian in 2022, proves this once again in his second solo feature, Weapons. One of the most astonishing films of the season, the delightfully winding fable blends many influences (provincial gothic, invasion narrative, waking nightmare), punctuated by striking visions of terror.

A former actor who started his career on the American comedy scene, Cregger, born in 1981, learned from classic B-movies how to unearth deep-seated fears hidden in everyday reality. The setting is a small town in Pennsylvania, the kind that might believe itself forgotten by history, but which is about to witness the return of the irrational.

It begins under the auspices of a fairy tale, with a childlike voiceover recalling strange events from a buried past. One night, at 2:17 in the morning, some 20 children rose from their beds and vanished. All were from the same class except one, Alex, the bullied outsider, who was curiously spared. The scene is imbued with great poetry: to the sound of melancholic folk music, these figures, called by the night, move in a straight line through the empty and shadow-cloaked spaces of suburban America.

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