Weapons is one of the best films of the year – but a prequel is a terrible idea

That's certainly been the case this year. First there was Sinners, Ryan Coogler's superb period drama vampire flick for Warner Bros that opened to almost universally glowing reviews and went on to become a genuine commercial sensation.

Then came Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later for Sony – a franchise film, sure, but one that showcased a greater appetite for experimentation and strangeness than pretty much the rest of this summer's blockbuster slate put together.

And now, Warners are back at it again with Weapons – the latest film from Barbarian director Zach Cregger, which has once again gone down a storm with both critics and audiences. The film had previously been the subject of a major studio bidding war based on Cregger's script alone, and both the reviews and its mightily impressive box office opening have proven that it was well worth the hype.

Given that success, it's perhaps no surprise that there's already talk of franchise expansion. That talk has come, in fairness, partly from Cregger himself – who told Variety that he had "another idea for something in this world that I’m kind of excited about," and now it's been confirmed by Deadline that early talks are indeed underway for another film, reportedly a prequel.

No other details have been provided at this stage, but anyone who's seen Weapons (and if you haven't, you should rectify that immediately) knows that a prequel almost certainly means one thing: we can most likely expect an origin story for the film's instantly iconic big bad, Gladys.

Played by Amy Madigan, the character is largely absent from the first two thirds of the movie – beyond a couple of frightening but brief appearances in the visions of other characters – but makes her grand arrival in the film's fifth chapter and more or less completely steals the show from that point onwards.

With an uncanny appearance comprised of a ginger wig and garish, haphazardly applied make-up, and a bizarre assortment of witchy paraphernalia with which she commits all manner of strange and unsettling acts, Gladys is a character who sits squarely in the Venn diagram of upsettingly evil and unmistakably camp, somehow managing to be both terrifying and hilarious at the same time. She seems certain to become one of the most popular Halloween costumes of the year when October comes around.

But as wonderful – and as mysterious – a character as she may be, I'm simply not convinced an origin story is all that good an idea. Part of what makes Gladys such an arresting and disturbing figure is precisely the fact that her backstory is left more or less entirely to the audience's imagination.

This feeds directly into the nightmarish, fairytale vibe that makes the film so effective – tapping into the unknown and the unexplained and playing on the kind of inexplicable fears that keep children up at night. It's enough for us to know that she's evil and not quite human, and any further explanation might simply dilute the effect.

Interestingly, Cregger himself has gone on record to say that he gave Madigan two different options for Gladys origin story, the first being that she "was once a regular person, but her spells and corrosive actions are a last-ditch effort to heal herself of a life-threatening illness" and the other being "that maybe she’s not a person at all".

"They’re very different options," he told Vanity Fair. "And [I] was like, ‘You don’t have to tell me, but it is either this or that.’ I don’t know which one she picked.”

That ambiguity only further underlines the point: it might be useful for the actor to know exactly who Gladys is and what makes her tick, but for the rest of us, it's simply not an important detail.

Even aside from all this, continuing Weapons's story seems to me to be taking entirely the wrong lessons from its success. So much of what worked about the film – from the unorthodox narrative approach to it's expert blending of tones – worked so well in part because of how refreshing and unique it all felt, and how shrouded in mystery everything had been ahead of release. Audiences, it seems, really are still willing to flock to things that seem new and exciting.

Of course, there's every possibility that Cregger has found another interesting way in – it would be foolhardy to completely rule out the odds of another great film at such an early stage – but my instinct is that I'd much rather be given a original yarn in a completely different world than another story in this one.

Weapons is currently showing in UK cinemas

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