I would suggest that Cregger’s follow-up, Weapons, is him trying to reverse engineer an even more successful movie by having multiple swerves throughout the entire thing. The whole film does follow one story, in which an entire classroom of children save for one shockingly disappear into the night, running out of their homes with seemingly no explanation, and throwing the entire community into turmoil.
The gravitational pull of Cruise’s star power and the enticing spectacle of watching him do his big stunts warped the franchise into being predominantly about those two things — Cruise and his stunts.
