In her 2018 breakout stand-up special, Nanette, comedian and actor Hannah Gadsby talks about the role tension plays in the telling of a good joke: If you build it just right, when you finally break that tension — by relieving the audience — you will get a great pay-off. The telling of a horror story follows a similar logic. But there is one way in which the format can deviate from that of comedy: With horror, the breaking of the tension does not always lead to relief (or at least, long-lasting relief) for the viewers. This is why horror films are notably sequel-prone.

This cleavage between closure and relief has, in the last decade, been explored by many filmmakers to create horror films that speak to larger social and political tensions. There may be resolution, but it does not bring relief. Instead, it forces people to sit in the discomfort of what the reel reveals about the real.

Zach Cregger, in his latest, Weapons, adds another film to this sub-genre. Weapons follows the story of a small town, Maybrook, in Pennsylvania, where 17 out of 18 kids in a class go missing, and the audience is taken on a journey to answer one question: Where did they go? Shot in a point-of-view frame, the film puts you in the shoes of the characters as much as it seems to say: “This is our world, these........

© Indian Express