To be known is to be seen; to be seen is to be loved. To be loved is to be served seven hot dogs with multiple sides, each one tastier than the next, all perfectly wedged onto a TV tray by your soulmate, with whom you are wearing matching Disney T-shirts, and to whom you return this delicious display of love with a little waggle of your fingers over the top of said glizzy tableau, as if to say, “This is the magic of a Saturday spent together—this is the magic of us.”
Weapons is a rollicking, haunting, pulpy good time at the movies, a worthy follow-up to Zach Cregger’s surprise hit Barbarian. Still, even though I know the kinds of jump scares that Cregger indulges in, at one point I accidentally grabbed the arm of the man next to me when he clutched our emotional support armrest a second before I could. We shared a laugh, then turned back to the screen to share another when Josh Brolin exclaimed one of the most appropriate instances of “What the fuck?!” ever put to film. In the lobby after the movie, people were positively gabbing about their favorite characters (“I’m phobic”), their biggest scares (first micro-bang sighting), and how Amy Madigan should legitimately be in the Oscar conversation (OK, I didn’t exactly hear that sound bite by the butter machine, but I’m using my own platform to say it now).
But even if Weapons hadn’t created that kind of community at the movie theater, one scene alone was enough to light the internet up into a shared high-sodium paroxysm. Not even a scene, but a single frame displaying the finishing touches on a tray of the shared hot dog lunch between elementary school principal Marcus (Benedict Wong) and his partner, Terry (Clayton Farris).
This is why you don’t use your phone at the movies! Not because a little animated robot balancing on the rim of a giant Coca-Cola cup told you not to, but because you could miss all this fun.
I’m almost embarrassed when I recall that, in the theater, I assumed myself to be uniquely suited as an audience for this single shot, since I’m a hot dog historian, Benedict Wong enthusiast, and general obsessor over strange food quirks … then I got home, logged onto the internet, and realized I’ve never had a unique experience in my life. But that’s not because I’m dumb or because everyone else is a hot dog journalist, too. It’s because Cregger is a skilled filmmaker and longtime comedic writer who knows how to forecast what we’ll think, when we’ll think it, and ideally, how those thoughts might make us feel when watching a scene that very briefly features a couple preparing for a hot dog lunch. The Weapons mock website for the town of Maybrook was already even outfitted with a “Hot Dog Recipe” web page (ingredients: 4 hot dogs, 4 sturdy buns, optional drizzle of mustard) before Marcus and Terry’s feast ever broke the internet.
In between the mostly rave reviews for Weapons, there’s been talk about whether this movie is about anything. To which I’d say: It’s about a witch who steals people’s hair and lures their children away to leech out their innocent life force using magic wands that she gets from her tiny magic tree she keeps behind a perimeter of salt. Since when are movies about suburban children put in peril by redheaded monsters with unique haircuts not enough to constitute spooky entertainment? Does everything have to be an allegory all the time now? The grief is on the screen. There is a little boy hand-feeding his classmates soup because a witch cast a spell on them! The trauma is coming through!!!
Sorry, I spun out a little, but we’re clearly doing suburban folk horror here. And you know how I know we’re doing it expertly? Because there are hot dogs. A lot of hot dogs! The scene showing Marcus and Terry’s suburban home life is so gorgeously ordinary, so intimately drawn, that every single detail suddenly shines in all the Technicolor of stifling suburbia: golden hot dog brown, buttery Ruffle beige, creamy Hidden Valley eggshell.
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Of course, visually, seven hot dogs wedged onto a tray is automatically hilarious: It’s boy dinner at its finest, meal prep at its most caloric—and given the odd number of dogs for an even number of people, the potential of a mustard-laced Lady and the Tramp scenario is unavoidable. But the familiarity that this shared lunch relays is just as obvious. The hot dogs—and the practiced way in which they’re assembled with sides, dessert, and drinks already waiting in the living room—speak to the shared life and love of these two partners, the ways they create fun in the familiar, enjoy each other’s company, invest in each other’s interests. The humor—and, yes, romance—of these hot dogs makes the horrors to come all the more horrifying. Hot Dog Saturday isn’t an allegory for grief or assault or generational trauma … it’s just a wildly efficient bit of storytelling.
Given the internet’s general obsession with Marcus and Terry’s lunch, it seems the most romantic thing one can hear from their partner in a film isn’t “I love you,” or “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi,” or even “Gitchie, gitchie, ya-ya, da-da.” The most romantic thing you can relay to a lover before a witch turns them against you is that, in this life, you’ve simply enjoyed doing taxes and laundry and eating seven hot dogs with them. So, just for a moment, let’s revel in every perfect detail of Marcus and Terry’s seven–hot dog lunch and what it tells us about their life together in those 28 seconds before Aunt Gladys rings the doorbell.
The Sheer Number of Hot Dogs
As a longtime hot dog lover and occasional hot dog journalist, I can tell when someone’s glizzy obsession is performative. Holiday-only hot dog eaters selling out the beaded “Dog Days” Staud bag? Please, folks—our culture is not your costume. The only people who complain about 10 hot dogs in a pack vs. eight buns in a bag are the people who aren’t turning over hot dogs fast enough to constantly be replenishing them anyway. But at seven dogs in a day, Terry and Marcus are true sausage slingers, the rare household that could potentially be getting one over on Big Hot Dog by balancing out the numbers with four packs of franks to five packs of buns …
Or course, seven hot dogs shared between two people is where things get a little more mysterious. Does Marcus get four because he’s larger in stature? Is it the opposite because Terry worked up a bigger appetite cooking? Many seem to believe that Marcus and Terry will split the seventh dog, in the greatest act of companionship yet. No matter which way the dogs go down, though, the final answer is almost definitely that, while the hot dogs aren’t precisely a metaphor, they are a lovely nod to Trevor Moore, Cregger’s former collaborator on The Whitest Kids U’ Know. Moore unexpectedly passed in 2021, and Cregger has said that writing Weapons was part of his grieving process. You can see Moore here in a sketch called “Hot Dog Timmy,” playing a doctor who’s alarmed to find out that his patient is consuming … seven hot dogs a day.
Appropriately, Weapons doesn’t try to pin down whether these seven dogs are a daily habit. The doctor’s office—like Marcus and Terry’s lovely home—is no place for hot dog shaming.
Mustard Only (These Guys Get It)
Mustard is the rectangle of hot dog condiments—hot dogs mustn’t only have mustard, but all hot dogs must have mustard. Even those absolute animals in Chicago know that.
Marcus’s Little Grabby Finger Gestures
The part of this scene I can’t stop thinking about—the part that so fully relays that Hot Dog Saturdays are more than just a treat, but a tradition—is when Terry applies the final mustard squiggle to the seventh dog and heads into the living room, where Benedict Wong as Marcus deploys little grabby jazz fingers as the tray comes closer and closer, only to, twist!, reach right for a baby carrot first.
The Carrot-to-Ranch Ratio
There is no diet culture in this home; there is only a Costco-size bottle of Hidden Valley ranch, squeezed into a glass bowl the size of a 2-year-old’s head. The accompanying baby carrots—in a smaller glass bowl—are merely a vehicle for ranch-icular homicide. But here’s the thing I think some people somehow aren’t considering about this ranch dressing quantity (still outrageous, still beautiful): Those Ruffles? They’re almost definitely getting a ranch bath, too.
Ruffles for Crunch, Cookies for Dessert
Which is to say, of course those are Ruffles. There could be no other chip. (Please do not mention Wavy LAYS—not at a trying time like this.) But a little sweet treat is just as important for a perfectly balanced plate as a little crunch. And Marcus and Terry have not only allotted themselves two chocolate chip cookies each but also put dessert on the lunch tray with all the other courses. Because they know what Lunchables knew before them: No one should have to wait for cookies, and no one should have to get up once they’re seated for Hot Dog Saturday.
The Soda? It’s Iced. The TV? It’s On.
Everyone knows that in a home with an equal distribution of labor, the chef cooks and the non-chef prepares the drinks and entertainment. In the living room, Marcus has poured glasses of ice-cold soda and turned on a nature documentary about—oh, yikes—parasitic fungus feeding on prey.
A Perfectly Sized Hot Dog Tray
My personal favorite detail is that not only do Marcus and Terry have a tray that precisely fits seven hot dogs, one bowl of baby carrots, one larger bowl of ranch dressing, a pile of Ruffles, and four chocolate chip cookies, but they also have another standing tray that sits in between their chairs in the living room to place the hot dog tray upon. This suggests that many, many more meals have been shared here, with many, many more perfectly sized trays to accommodate many, many more special shared moments. (Oh no, I’m getting sad.)
Coordinating Disney Shirts
At first glance, it appears that Marcus and Terry have woken up on Saturday morning and donned matching Mickey Mouse T-shirts. Which is already kooky enough behavior to relay a soulmate bond that no number of hot dogs could ever convey. But upon closer inspection, it’s clear that they are, in fact, wearing coordinating Disney T-shirts: Just before the doorbell rings, you can see that Marcus is wearing a T-shirt depicting an old-fashioned Mickey Mouse … while Terry is wearing a T-shirt depicting an old-fashioned Minnie Mouse. (This isn’t fair; I’M SO SAD.)
Even More Auxiliary Trays
In addition to the tray for the hot dogs and the tray for the hot dog tray, Marcus and Terry each have another TV tray sitting on the outside of their individual chairs. These trays don’t seem to be in use on Hot Dog Saturday, but there they sit, waiting for Fondue Sunday, or Spaghetti Monday, or the nationally celebrated Taco Tuesday. Weapons is a horror movie, one that often makes you laugh, but for one 30-second lunch break, Weapons is a romance. It’s like that opening sequence in Up that quickly and devastatingly lets you know: This is the kind of love that, if lost, you’d mourn for a lifetime. And if there’s any solace in these seven hot dogs (and the baby carrots and Ruffles and ranch and four cookies), it’s that we know: Before Marcus and Terry died horrible deaths, my God, did they live.
Jodi Walker
Jodi covers pop culture, internet obsessions, and, occasionally, hot dogs. You can hear her on ‘We’re Obsessed,’ ‘The Morally Corrupt Bravo Show,’ and ‘The Prestige TV Podcast,’ and yelling into the void about daylight saving time.Source link
