The Art of Being Scared

My whole life, people have made fun of me for my deep and abiding love of horror movies. When I was a kid, running around excited, trying to explain the plot of “Evil Dead II” to my family, they would not only question what kind of people come up with such disturbing ideas, but what kind of kid was so enraptured by them? I didn’t have the vocabulary back then to explain that it wasn’t the gore and disturbing ideas that I was so in love with, it was that being genuinely scared out of my wits made me feel breathtakingly, wholly alive.

As a middle schooler, my oldest brother (a bigger fan of horror than I will ever be) ordered a rare and expensive Michael Myers mask out of a catalogue. Once it arrived, he also bought coveralls to complete the costume. So, for a dark summer or two of my childhood, when most kids were going swimming with friends or riding their bikes across the rural countryside, I was stalked around my yard by The Shape, complete with deafening silence and a real butcher knife. Is this why I’m so weird as an adult? Most likely. At least that’s what my therapist tells me.

Running around a dozen acres, hiding from my brother, the serial killer, was terrifying but also life-affirming in a way that’s hard to quantify. When I see a horror movie that fills me with dread or bombards me with imagery that chills me to my bones, I don’t just get an endorphin rush of fear, but also the sweet kiss of nostalgia that reminds me that being scared has been a way of life for me as long as I can remember.

Regardless of how connected I am on an almost cellular level to horror movies, that’s not the only reason why, as a genre, I find them so remarkable. Horror has an elasticity to it that other genres don’t come close to achieving. Just in 2025, for example, we’ve had some of the best new horror releases of the century, and to describe them is to examine how dissimilar and expansive they are as pieces of writing and visual art.

“Sinners” is a bloody and unapologetically horny vampire movie that sheds light on the Jim Crow South and brings the real American monsters kicking and screaming into the light. “Together” is a gooey, hilarious and disturbing metaphor for codependent and toxic relationships that manages to be frightening and gut-bustlingly funny, sometimes in the same scene. “Bring Her Back” unpacks trauma and grief as a malevolent force of unpredictable nature, featuring an Oscar-worthy performance by Sally Hawkins and a heart-rending ending I haven’t stopped thinking about for months. Or there’s the allegory for aging in “The Rule of Jenny Pen,” the generational trauma of “Final Destination: Bloodline,” or the comparison of the nature of evil vs. the violence of a hungry predator in “Dangerous Animals.” Not one of these movies plays like the other.

At the top of this pyramid of new horror stands “Weapons,” the new film from Zach Creggar, the director of “Barbarian,” as well as co-creator of the sketch comedy series “The Whitest Kids U’ Know.” Creggar glows up hugely as a filmmaker with “Weapons,” a horror comedy so assured that it feels like the work of a major talent, not someone just releasing their sophomore effort. Go into the film as blindly as possible, because watching the unpredictable story unfold is one of the most sublime experiences I’ve had in a theater all year.

All I will say is this: at 2:17am, 17 children from the same third-grade class in a small Pennsylvania town all run out their front doors and disappear. A month later, the town is still grieving and at a loss as to where the children are. Julia Garner stars as Justine Gandy, the children’s teacher and Josh Brolin is Archer Graff, the father of one of the missing kids, and the two of them team up like Nancy Drew and a Hardy Boy to find the kids and solve the mystery.

More than its spookiness or the moments of pure terror, “Weapons” is also drunk on the possibility of cinema and manages to pack every scene with innovative camera movements, compelling characters that you want to get to know and a mystery that is consistently fun and original. I already want to go back and see it again, spending more time in this world and paying attention more closely to how Creggar and his team have crafted such a darkly twisted bedtime story that feels like something the Brothers Grimm would find a little too f**ked up.

And, sure, you can watch “Weapons” as a fun and spooky roller coaster ride and nothing more, but Creggar also knows how to, pardon, weaponize the bottomless potential of the horror genre to tell a deeply personal story about loss and grief. On August 7, 2021 at around 2:30am, Trevor Moore, Creggar’s best friend and co-creator of “The Whitest Kids U’ Know,” tragically fell from a balcony and died. The opening night, midnight screenings of “Weapons” across the country would get out late/early around 2:30am on August 7/8. Horror isn’t just how we get scared, but how we secretly grieve sometimes too.

Even if you’re not a diehard horror fanatic like me, “Weapons” is an elevated affair without the pretentiousness. It walks a razor-tipped tightrope between exciting entertainment and thought-provoking seriousness at times both breathtaking and awe-inspiring. I found myself staring at some of the genuinely insane imagery on display and was reminded of those months, years ago, running through the fields of my childhood and being stalked by an unknowable, masked serial killer. And, weirdly, I found that comforting. Thank you, horror movies. You saved me. I owe you one.

“Weapons”
Dir. Zach Creggar
Grade: A-
Now playing at Regal Old Mill, Madras Cinema 5