Review: Weapons (2025)

Weapons (2025)

Rated R for strong bloody violence and grisly images, language throughout, some sexual content and drug use

Score: 4 out of 5

Zach Cregger did it again. Barbarian proved that, between him, Jordan Peele, and Danny and Michael Philippou, former sketch comedy guys are turning out to be some of modern horror's most promising creative voices, and with this film, Cregger is now two-for-two. Weapons is a film that starts with a daring premise and an all-star cast of A-listers, veteran character actors, and rising stars, and much like Barbarian, it is a film where I can't really tell you much about it without giving away the best parts. (The trailers certainly didn't. Props to whoever edited them so that, much like Barbarian's trailers, they didn't spoil the movie, instead offering us just the basic premise and some tantalizing imagery stripped of any context.) It's not the "omg this is the most fucked-up movie ever!!!" that I've seen others call it, with a lot (though not all) of its unique flavor coming down to its structure more than its plot, but even so, this is a movie I highly recommend you see in theaters with a big crowd like I did.

The film starts in an ordinary Pennsylvania suburb where, one night, seventeen children mysteriously vanish. What's more, evidence suggests that, at 2:17 AM, all of them got up in the middle of the night, walked out of their homes, and did a Naruto run off into the distance, their destination unknown. The one thing they had in common was that they were all students in the third-grade class of Justine Gandy, a mild-mannered schoolteacher with a drinking problem who showed up to work the following morning to find all of her students missing save for one, Alex Lilly. The rest of the town immediately suspects that Justine was involved in the mass disappearance of their children, and from there, we follow multiple perspectives in a story that jumps around as all sorts of people wind up wrapped up in this mysterious case.

I'm gonna stop right there and tell you to just see the movie yourself if you wanna know what's going on after that. There are deeper themes to the story, from addiction to bad parenting to the generation gap, but to say anything more would be to invite spoilers. What I can talk about is the large cast of well-rounded characters in this film, each of whom gets roughly twenty minutes devoted to them and their role in the case, their paths often intersecting as they all try to solve the mystery. Instead of a linear structure where the story is told in chronological order, the film is split by character, each of their perspectives offering additional pieces to the puzzle before we finally come to the answer. Julia Garner as the teacher Justine and Josh Brolin as the grieving father Archer Graff are the closest things this film has to "heroes," but they are merely two members of an ensemble cast that collectively makes this film's setting feel like an actual community riven by an unexplainable tragedy. Each of them has something to contribute, whether it's Garner's Justine buckling under the stress of being accused of kidnapping and murder, Brolin's Archer growing obsessed with finding his son all while believing the rumors about Justine, Alden Ehrenreich's power-tripping police officer (and Justine's ex-boyfriend) Paul and Benedict Wong's school principal Marcus being the authority figures desperately trying to manage the flaring tensions in the town, or Austin Abrams as the homeless junkie James who, in his quest for drugs and drug money, stumbles upon something he really shouldn't have. There are red herrings, there are characters who I quickly figured out knew more than they let on, and I bought into each and every one of these characters who brought me on that journey. There wasn't anything particularly revelatory about the plot, and there were a few dangling threads that didn't go anywhere (there was one scene that felt like an attempted commentary on gun violence and school shootings that just came completely out of left field and was never touched on again), but this was more about the twisted journey than the destination, and Cregger's script and the actors involved carried me on that journey.

As a horror film, this is a slow burn that plays more like a mystery thriller for most of its runtime. It's one where it quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary serial killer plot afoot, but it's still a film that takes its time as its characters each unravel the central mystery, the bizarre nature of the crime leaving them that much more confounded as they have no way to deal with something like it. As a result, when the bursts of horror do start entering the film, the characters have no context for what's happening and it hits that much harder for them. The third act pulls no punches, and while just how wild it gets has been kind of overstated, it does still get pretty wild. It isn't afraid to get a bit goofy, either, whether it's with the Naruto run of the kids on the night they ran off, Marcus' goofball nature at home, or the climax where everything comes to a head, culminating in a moment that must be seen to be believed and which the film helpfully explains left everybody involved (understandably) traumatized for life. While Barbarian was a film where you never would have guessed that it was made by a former member of the sketch comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U'Know, here you can definitely feel Cregger's WKUK background coming through, even if it never forgets that it is a horror movie first and foremost. This is just an expertly put together film that, even when it's not being exceptionally scary, still does a great job at capturing and setting a particular mood. Cregger feels far more self-assured behind the camera than you'd expect from a guy who's making only his second horror film.

The Bottom Line

Other reactions I've seen may have overstated just how scary and crazy this movie is, but even so, this was just a really good movie that I came very close to giving a 5 out of 5. Horror fans have been feasting this year, and this is no exception. Check it out.