Following up on his robust horror debut of Barbarian, Zach Creggar’s Weapons is another wild toying with the genre. He spins a web of various characters around a compelling premise that gets stranger as it continues. Seventeen kids go missing one night after leaving their homes, and nobody can figure out what happened to them. While the mystery alone is a solid staging for psychological drama, Creggar’s script tries to find a way to make this story go into directions so weird that they are sure to be met with the punchline of “What the fuck!” as one character will scream after having a nightmare.

As a merging of a scary campfire story and nonlinear ensemble character segments ala 21 Grams, this film isn’t afraid to get darkly messy with its many elements. We feel for teacher, Justine (Julia Garner), whose entire classroom, sans one student, went missing, making her a clear target for the community, given her past employment and current alcoholism. But we also feel for the father, Archer (Josh Brolin), who is torn between blaming Justine and tracking down where his son might’ve run towards a specific location. We almost have to laugh at the furious desperation of the flawed police officer Paul Morgan (Alden Ehrenreich), whose bad karma from addiction and corruption snaps around him so tightly. The same goes for the homeless addict James (Austin Abrams), though his poor position in life makes him a little easier to root for in his scuffles with law enforcement.

The truth about all this strangeness lies with Alex (Cary Christopher), the only kid from Justine’s class who hasn’t gone missing. His revelations are saved for last as the community spends so much time either fighting for answers out of the kid or leaving him to grief in his own way. The protection and concern for this kid weaponizes the community’s distrust of one another, cranking the paranoia, conspiracies, and nightmares to the max level. So much time is spent focusing on the kids that the rest of the town seems almost oblivious to the creeping Gladys (Amy Madigan). You would think she’d stick out for big glasses, red hair, and nasty teeth, but she has a way of melding into the background as a strange spirit or into the foreground as a kindly old aunt. The shocking truth of the missing children is revealed, but in a manner more compelling for how slow it takes all the adults in the room to listen to the only kid in the room who can’t quite talk about it.

The most mesmerizing aspect of Creggar’s story is the intricate plotting and adherence to a bizarreness that characters never get accustomed to in their investigations and endeavors. This film has enough room for the characters to stretch their terrified legs and get stuck in thorny pits along the way. It’s a movie where Archer’s obsession can take the form of a giant gun in his dreams, and Paul’s ineptitude gets him stabbed with needles multiple times while on the job. While nearly every aspect connects, it’s parsed out in an unexpected way. Justine, for example, may think she’s safe for being out in a public space in the daytime, only for a bug-eyed familiar to come running out of the woods to kill her. There’s a reason for this attack, but when it happens, you’re as confused and frightened as Justine, her mind racing as fast as her legs to flee what seems like a fast-moving zombie (it’s technically not).

Weapons is loaded with surprises for a horror film that refuses to be pinned down by any one sub-genre or message. Creggar never settles on a simple allegory or digestible terror, relying more on keeping the audience off guard before they get too comfy trying to solve the mystery. If the film is a puzzle, Creggar makes things interesting by shaking up the box, cutting the pieces smaller, covering them in blood, and hiding them around a spooky house. Sure, in one sense, the film does seem to comment on the effects of school shootings, yet it masterfully conveys all the anxieties, blame, and blind fury of that scenario without a single bullet being fired in a classroom. And the fact that the director could pull that off in a film with absurd moments of humor and extra-gross gore effects is nothing short of masterful.