On the 174th episode of My Bloody Podcast, Bryan, Preston, Chelsea, and Dan set out to solve the great cinematic mystery of the week: the missing kids in Weapons, the new box office monarch from director Zach Cregger. This is no ordinary missing-persons case. It’s equal parts belly laugh and bloodbath, the kind of tonal tightrope act that makes you chuckle at a perfectly timed joke, only to have that laughter die in your throat when something unspeakable happens to the person telling it.

Naturally, we went opening night, because horror fans can’t help themselves. We’re the sort of people who see a glowing marquee and think, “This will almost certainly end badly,” and buy the tickets anyway. It’s what scientists might call genre compulsion. And Weapons rewarded our poor impulse control by becoming one of our favorite films of the year.

In this episode, we dissect its strange alchemy of how Cregger blends humor and horror without either side losing its potency. Also, how the gore, while plentiful, is too inventive to feel gratuitous. And of course, how the narrative doles out revelations with the precision of veteran filmmaker Tarantino who’s also maybe a bit of a sadist. And then there’s the framing of terror itself, moments so original they make other horror films look like they’ve been cribbing from the same dusty notebook for decades.