"This is quite impressive, considering it cost only $38 million to make. The reason for its breakout success owes something to the effectiveness with which director Zach Cregger accesses a commonly held fear -that despite the distance from the city, despite the clean, tree-lined streets, despite the picket fences and walkable town centers, suburbs are not necessarily safe. Something can get in and take the children."
"Back in the 19th century, as American cities expanded dramatically with industrialization, common beliefs about cities as danger zones of crime and vice were capitalized on by novelists, pastors, and journalists. In the novel The Quaker City, published in 1845, readers were treated to a panoply of urban evils. In writer George Lippard's Philadelphia, we encounter dissolute clergymen, grasping merchants, debauched aristocrats, selfish bank presidents, philanderers, pimps, madams, and cruel, mindless henchmen. The book was a massive success."
The hit horror movie Weapons has earned over $230 million worldwide on a $38 million budget by tapping suburban safety fears. Director Zach Cregger frames suburbs—despite distance from city, clean streets, picket fences, and walkable centers—as not necessarily safe, where something can infiltrate and endanger children. Fear historically motivated suburban migration as an escape from urban crime. Nineteenth-century industrial expansion reinforced beliefs about cities as zones of vice, exemplified by George Lippard's 1845 novel The Quaker City, which depicted urban depravity and became a massive success. The Quaker City drew on a real 1843 Philadelphia crime that captured national attention.
Read at Psychology Today
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