00:00My first question is, with Barbarian, you sort of reinvented narrative structure with bold pivots and tonal shifts.
00:08With Weapons, how did your approach to storytelling evolve?
00:13And did you feel pressure to out-twist yourself in a way?
00:17You know, I didn't really think about out-twisting myself, you know, because honestly, when I wrote Weapons,
00:25I was dealing with the loss of someone very, very close to me.
00:29And so I wrote this as just kind of a way to just kind of like get that kind of pain out.
00:35So I wrote it in kind of like a blast.
00:38I kind of like vomited this out really, really quickly.
00:41And I wasn't thinking about what's my next movie.
00:44I was more just thinking about like all of this like pain that I was in.
00:48And I don't think that that comes through.
00:51I don't want anyone to go see Weapons and think like, oh, a meditation on grief.
00:55You know, I'm so over horror movies being about grief and trauma.
00:58And, you know, that's not interesting to me.
01:01But the only good thing that came from this tragedy in my life was that I was able to write
01:06from a place of just pure creative urgency and not a place of like result-oriented career thought.
01:16You know what I mean?
01:16It was like it was just more for me.
01:19And I think whenever you're writing for yourself, you're probably going to write better than if you're writing for like a result.
01:25You know what I mean?
01:26Well, it's an excellent result.
01:30Thank you.
01:31I mean, I hope you don't have to go through another one of those situations.
01:35No, me neither.
01:35I mean, but it's, yeah, it's really, really great.
01:39And the horror genre often explores social anxieties, of course.
01:47Yeah.
01:48Through metaphor.
01:50Again, without spoiling.
01:53What do you think Weapons is tapping into?
01:55I don't think it's about, to me, Weapons is not an examination of societal malfunction.
02:02To me, it's more about my own personal stuff.
02:06You know, like the final chapter of this movie is very autobiographical.
02:10It's about, and this is not a spoiler, but it's examining the dynamic of children with parents who are alcoholics,
02:18which is my childhood, and the idea of a foreign entity entering a household and inverting the dynamic between a child and the parents.
02:27You know, the child feeding the parents soup and, you know, being the caretaker and that sort of a thing.
02:31So, you know, it's much more about my own autobiographical stuff than looking outward.
02:37It's a looking inward movie.
02:40Yeah.
02:40And if a horror movie is powerful, which I think Weapons definitely is, it leaves the audience with a lingering sense of dread rather than jump scares, I think.
02:53What do you hope that the emotional aftershock for viewers will be?
02:59Well, I hope it's satisfying.
03:01I don't want people to leave and feel bummed out, even though it's not.
03:05The ending is a happy ending, and it's not a happy ending.
03:07It's bittersweet, and it's a little mysterious, and I think that's good.
03:12I like that you said it's not about jump scares.
03:14Look, there are a couple of jump scares in this movie.
03:16That's okay.
03:17But I don't tend to respond well to jump scares in my horror movies when that's the only thing you get.
03:23I would rather, like, The Shining, when you see those two little girls at the end of the hallway, to me, like, that's the sweet spot.
03:29You know, I like to see an image that you could show me the photograph, and it would still scare me.
03:34You know, it's not about, like, bah!
03:35Yeah, and so I don't know.
03:38Whether I'm successful or not at that is up for debate.
03:41But, I mean, that's definitely what I'm trying to lean into.
03:44Yeah.
03:45Yeah, I think jump scares, to me, are always fine if they serve the narrative of the story, you know?
03:50Yes.
03:50But then I'm totally okay.
03:52But if it's a cat out of a closet, I'm like, okay, I'm done.
03:55You know, and it's so funny that you say cat out of a closet, because that is the example that everyone gives when they talk about what they don't want out of a jump scare, is the cat coming out of the cupboard.
04:04And the reason is, you said it, that's not narratively significant.
04:09You know, it's just a jump scare just to get you.
04:12And, yeah, I think you're exactly right.
04:14You know, it's just a jump scare.
Kommentare