Julia Garner has genuine range. Even she thinks so.
When I embarrassed myself in an interview by asking the Ozark actor to compare her two most recent characters, Shalla-Bal the herald of Galactus in The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Justine, her character in Zach Cregger’s new horror movie Weapons, she came back with an immediate, laughter-tinged response about what they have in common: “Nothing.”
“Justine is not cool, calm, and collected,” she says of Weapons’ central figure, a teacher tormented by an enraged town pointing fingers her way after 17 kids from her classroom go missing in the middle of the night. The teacher can barely hold on in the wake of that loss. It’s a far cry from Garner’s steely take on the Silver Surfer: Garner doesn’t even think Justine could handle the flying surfboard. “Justine would freak out. She’s probably afraid of heights!”
The distance between the two roles is a testament to Garner’s range, but also a glimpse into how deeply she commits to a character — sometimes without even realizing it. Looking back on how she molded Justine into a playable character, Garner realized she was pulling from a source close to her.
“I really wanted glasses, and I didn’t know why. I just felt this real instinct. And I wanted to wear graphic T-shirts. And then I realized, looking at film stills, standing next to Zach, I was… I just imitating Zach.”
Co-star Alden Ehrenreich thinks that adoption of her director’s persona makes perfect sense, in this case, and isn’t something that would come easily on a movie like The Fantastic Four. “One of the things that is so special about [Weapons] is that each of these characters is a part of [Zach],” he says. He calls Weapons‘ script one of the best he’s ever read, with some of the deepest character work he’s seen committed to the page. “There are these worlds behind all the things that are getting said, much of which you don’t see in the film.”
Set in fractured segments that slowly converge, Weapons isn’t about the answers when a tragedy strikes, so much as it’s about how the adults in orbit around it respond. There are jump scares, supernatural twists, and plenty of answers, but as Cregger weaves between storylines, he seems just as interested in letting his actors dig deep into the characters’ psyches as he is in payoffs.
Alden Ehrenreich in Weapons
“There are some elements of the movie that are really sad, in a very beautiful way,” Ehrenreich says. “I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to feel right now.”
For the actor, the sadness stems in part from how people in the film — and maybe in life — respond to pain. Both Justine and Ehrenreich’s character Paul are dealing with alcohol abuse on top of all the eerie activity pumping through their suburban town. If there’s a thematic core to Weapons, it’s that broken people exist everywhere, no matter what is happening.
“People in this are all dealing with some form of addiction,” Ehrenreich says. “And I think that that’s in some ways where we’re at with technology.”
“There’s a lot of feelings of being out of control in this movie,” Garner says. “And I think the sense of lack of control, that’s what is also going to resonate with people watching this — a struggle with control.”
A struggle for control? Tragedy? Family? Maybe Justine and Shalla-Bal the herald of Galactus have a little more in common than anyone thinks.
