Weapons is the newest horror film from writer/director Zach Cregger. It's got quite the stacked cast with the likes of Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, June Diane Raphael, and Amy Madigan. The movie has been a huge success, outperforming Cregger's debut horror breakout hit Barbarian in just a few days. Every actor in it is fantastic — the movie is like an episode of Twin Peaks if it were written by Stephen King. You can read our review of it here. I, myself, much preferred Barbarian but still enjoyed Weapons overall.
The movie is about a small town where a bunch of children go missing. Not unlike Cregger's Barbarian, it also takes a pretty sharp turn halfway through that either works or doesn't. In Barbarian, the turn happens when, immediately after watching Bill Skarsgård's head getting smashed in by a large saggy-boobed monster, we cut to Justin Long singing in his convertible. In this movie, the turn happens when, after a brief creepy flash of her in the woods, Madigan's Gladys enters the principal's office in full clown drag.
Well, actually, it all starts when we get the chapter from the principal's POV. We get a very weirdly placed reveal that the principal, Marcus (Benedict Wong), is gay and we meet his partner, Terry (Clayton Farris). I love the idea of a character being casually gay and it not being needed to be a plot point — and yet ... I found the gay couple's portrayal to be distractingly goofy and vaguely problematic.
Garner's Justine calls up her boss, Marcus, while he's at the supermarket with Terry, who is … deciding between which Fruity Pebbles cereal to get. Terry's entrance into the film marks the turning point where the film starts to lean more into humor and camp. For me, this is a switch up more jarring than the cut from a head being smashed like a tomato to a man happily singing in his car in Barbarian. The movie had been mostly serious with a few laughs prior but the gay couple bring the camp — well, Terry and Gladys do, at least. Marcus seems goofier once he's with his partner, which, to be fair, is probably just showcasing his work-life vs. his home-life. But the Fruity Pebbles cereal? I mean, come on!
We then see them back home, in matching eye-roll worthy Mickey and Minnie Mouse T-shirts, where they are watching TV and about to chow down on their dinner of seven hot dogs, a bowl of ranch dressing, cookies, and carrots. Yes, I know, the hot dogs are most likely a reference to a sketch from Cregger's comedy show The Whitest Kids U'Know. The sketch is pretty damn funny, with a doctor learning his patient eats around seven hot dogs a day — but why the hell did the lingering shot on phallic food need to be in the gay couple's entrance? And why did they have to have corny, jokey matching outfits?
When It Chapter Two came out, I hated that gay couple's opening scene, even if only one of them dies. They are beaten for kissing in public by a group of townspeople from Derry, which ends with one of them being thrown off a bridge and then promptly eaten by Skarsgård's Pennywise. It's a cruel start to a movie containing no other out gay characters (the end reveal that Bill Hader's Richie Tozier was closeted sucked shit and doesn't count). It genuinely felt unusually cruel in a movie full of cruel deaths — and reminder: a child gets his head bitten off in that movie.
But here's the thing: the child wasn't being attacked for being gay before said beheading. Pennywise just likes eating folks and I don't mind seeing Pennywise biting off limbs, but I don't need a hate crime humiliation as a preamble to a character getting eaten. If the gay couple had been mugged, thrown off a bridge, and then eaten by Pennywise or if Tozier was openly gay throughout the movie — it all might've sat better with me.
It Chapter Two's gay couple felt homophobic and antiquated, even by 2016 standards — and that's not what's happening with Weapons. I think Cregger is probably a well-meaning straight man bringing in humor at the wrong moment while also trying to give gay characters depth — and not seeing how the two might not work so well together. I would not label Cregger or the movie as homophobic by any means, but sometimes things can come off slightly problematic even when there are no ill intentions.
And speaking of demonic clowns terrorizing gays — Gladys enters Marcus and Terry's home before they can chow down on their phallic dinner. She does her thing in a scene that is funny yet creepy, asking for a bowl of water, casually revealing she stole ribbons from Marcus' office, ringing a weird bell — the entire time the gay couple just seems very confused. It's played for jokes and is genuinely funny while building tension. Then, she takes control of Marcus and he brutally headbutts his partner to death, basically exploding his head. And, again, I don't think this is homophobic — gays can be killed off in horror movies just like straight folks can be — but sometimes we need to think about how it's being written.
The script could've used a gay person's once over, to read that scene and say, "Let's rework this." Because not only is it the cruelest death of the movie but it's also, at about the halfway mark, the first on screen death of the movie. Outside of the very satisfying dismemberment of Gladys at the very end, it's the goriest kill of the entire movie. When Garner's character is forced to kill her Weapon-ized situationship man, he gets a piece of skin peeled off then a bullet to the head — nbd, guys! I think if we'd taken out some of the seemingly gay jokes, ditched the matching outfits, and if Terry had come into the film earlier (or were deciding between brands of cookies instead of god damned Fruity Pebbles), it might've worked for me. I don't mind the death or the jokiness of the gay couple, but those two things put together, mixed with such little screen time for Terry, just felt Not Great™ overall.
Two gay clowns, bested by an old clown-y witch.
So, be gay, do crimes, eat seven hot dogs if you want — but don't immediately after that headbutt your partner's head til it explodes.
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