It’s never easy to be a teacher, but at least most don’t have it half as bad as poor Mrs. Gandy (Julia Garner). One Wednesday at 2:16 a.m., all but one of her 3rd grade students got out of bed and ran into the woods in the eeriest way possible for no discernable reason. Now, she’s under investigation by the PTA and has to deal with terrifying nightmares about the missing kids waking up and taunting her in their shadowy classroom. To top it all off, she’s also gained a creepy kid narrator of her own to tell the world about her plight.
That’s a really tough break, but it’s also what happens when you’re unlucky enough to find yourself at the center of a Zach Cregger “horror epic” like Weapons. That description, which the Barbarian writer-director shared with Entertainment Weekly in an interview about how Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia inspired the film’s scale, certainly seems apt. Weapons‘ first full-length trailer capitalizes on the creep factor of the film’s already-excellent marketing, with a few chilling new elements to up the ante. We’ll let you experience all that for yourself, but take heed: this one isn’t for the squeamish. (Maybe avoid altogether if you’re even a little bit emetophobic.)
Even in this expanded look—which comes with its own in-universe “article” on the film’s companion site—the actual plot remains a mystery. The missing kids element will “propel you through at least half of the movie, but that is not the movie,” Cregger teased to EW. “The movie will fork and change and reinvent and go in new places. It doesn’t abandon that question, believe me, but that’s not the whole movie at all. By the midpoint, we’ve moved on to way crazier shit than that.” Anyone who’s seen Barbarian will know that Cregger is indeed capable of crazier shit than most of us could ever dream up before seeing it on the big screen. This twisty construction paid off in spades for the 2022 film, so it’s a great sign for audiences, if not the characters who actually have to live with its consequences.
In addition to Garner, the film also stars Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan. We’ll see what ungodly horrors they have to deal with (besides all the bile vomiting and face stabbing we’ve already witnessed) when Weapons hits theaters on August 8.
