WEAPONS (2025) review

written by: Zach Cregger
produced by: Roy Lee, Zach Cregger, Miri Yoon, J. D. Lifshitz, and Raphael Margules
directed by: Zach Cregger
rated: R (for strong bloody violence and grisly images, language throughout, some sexual content and drug use)
runtime: 128 min.
U.S. release date: August 8, 2025

“Barbarian” was something of a summer sleeper hit when it dropped in theaters in 2022. That unusual horror film garnered a ton of word-of-mouth, the kind where a recommendation includes a caveat asking viewers to go in cold. It was riveting, unsettling, and quite funny in places, which is what writer/director Zach Cregger delivers again this summer with “Weapons”. There’s a more ambitious approach taken here, offering multiple perspectives from a handful of characters all in some way connecting to the same event. The result is something outstanding on many levels, one that welcomes numerous viewings.

Just like “Barbarian” left us blown away, albeit with some dangling questions, “Weapons” does that too. Still, none of them are enough to prevent us from being on the edge of our seats and wholly invested during our viewing experience. The general premise, which can be found on the movie’s poster, is enough to pique our curiosity and start us wondering.

The modern-day story takes place in a suburban Pennsylvania town called Maybrook. One Wednesday at 2:17 am, 17 children get out of bed, open their front doors, and run out into the night with their arms outstretched. The next morning, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) enters the third-grade class where she teaches and notices that only one student is sitting at their desk, and the other 17 students are missing. The lone boy is Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), a quiet boy who doesn’t know what happened to his classmates.

Naturally, this sends concerned parents into an uproar with all fingers pointing at Gandy, since she is their teacher. While she is just as perplexed and concerned, they aren’t hearing it and quickly make her life miserable throughout the month that passes after the mysterious occurrence. One such parent is Archer Graff (Josh Brolin, thankfully replacing Pedro Pascal – sorry, he can’t be in everything!), the devastated father of one of the missing children, who runs his own local construction business. Archer is one of the first to call Gandy out, during a town meeting that occurs just before the elementary school is set to reopen. He goes out of his way to trail Justine, which often finds him watching her frequent the liquor store. His frustration becomes even more apparent when he visits a police captain (Toby Huss), who patiently gives him some face time, but ultimately tells Archer the same story: they have no leads.

“Weapons” starts with a child (Scarlett Sher) narrating an introduction, stating, “…a lot of people die in a lot of weird ways in this story”, and the child isn’t wrong. (Although by the time the ending comes, I did find myself wondering who that narrator was, but maybe it doesn’t matter.) As the film progresses, Creggers shows us all these “weird ways” as he breaks up the overall story into chapters named after specific characters (like “Justine” and “Archer”). These chapters tell the same events through a different lens, often providing new details that allow us to piece together this twisted puzzle. Even when we are at times one step ahead of the characters in the movie, we are still just as unsettled as they are, and can relate to their perpetual “WTF?” state of mind.

Three other characters get their chapters as well, and each of them is interconnected to Justine and Archer in some way. A local police officer named Paul Morgan (a mustachioed Alden Ehrenreich) gets involved thanks to his complicated former relationship with Justine. He encounters and grows suspicious of town junkie James (Austin Abrams), who lives in a tent on the outskirts of town. School principal Andrew Marcus (Benedict Wong) advises Justine that she shouldn’t do any investigating on her own, and that includes leaving that poor Alex kid alone. These three characters add interesting and often humorous layers to the story, and their chapters provide

But, of course, Justine’s concerns for Alex, coupled with her desire to clear her name, compel her to visit the boy’s home. Her concern increases when she notices all the windows are covered up with newspaper, and when she finds the one window she can peek into, she finds Alex’s parents (Whitmer Thomas and Callie Schuttera) just sitting on the couch. More questions accumulate, and more come once Alex’s visiting Aunt Gladys (a wild Amy Madigan) gets called into the principal’s office. She’s a bizarre sight to behold with her pale skin, bright red wig, and lipstick that looks like Demi Moore applied it in “The Substance”. She tells the principal Alex’s parents are ill, but we know there’s something much more at play here.

Leading up to the film’s release, Cregger has shared some of his influences and inspiration for “Weapons,” and they all make sense. From Peter Weir’s “The Picnic at Hanging Rock” to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia” to Denis Villaneueve’s “Prisoners”, the look, composition, and feel of all three films is apparent. One of the main reasons for viewer captivation is due to the impressive work done by cinematographer Larkin Seiple (“Everything Everywhere All At Once”) and editor Joe Murphy (“Barbarian”). Seiple stations the camera on dimly lit nighttime streets and compels us to pan and scan each frame for clues and answers. They also do a great job of allowing strange moments to breathe, often resulting in scenes that are so bizarrely funny. Overall, their work heightens the storytelling in striking and artful ways.

It’s easy to compare the disappearance of 17 children in an American suburb to what transpires after a mass school shooting. The same questions are asked by parents, school administrators, authorities, and media in the aftermath of such tragedies. In “Weapons”, when some questions are answered, it often elicits new questions, but that’s not at all a dig at Cregger’s screenplay. Instead, it serves to remind us that there’s rarely ever a good reason for any of the horrible things that happen in the world.

There will be much talk about Zegger’s third act, which goes about as bugnuts as the third act of “Barbarian”, perhaps even more so. Some viewers might take issue with what transpires, while others will clap (like they did at my advance screening). One might even find the meaning of the title in this third act. Regardless, “Weapons” is quite a rollercoaster ride, the kind you wish you could get off, and also the kind you can laugh and enjoy with heart in your throat.

RATING: ***1/2