Weapons (2025)

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://movieswetextedabout.com/weapons-movie-review-an-ambitious-film-that-defies-horror-expectations/

"Weapons confirms Zach Cregger as a filmmaker with a distinct vision, capable of combining impressive technical command with uncommon narrative ambition.

Josh Brolin and Julia Garner's performances are fundamental pillars supporting the film's intensity, while the tense and bloody scenes contribute to a truly visceral experience. Despite the abrupt and somewhat disappointing ending that weakens some of the accumulated impact, the way themes like collective trauma and suburban decay are explored reveals an authorial confidence deserving recognition.

With all its imperfections, the movie provokes, engages, and leaves striking images and sensations, reinforcing Cregger as one of the most intriguing voices in contemporary horror cinema."

Rating: B+

Seventeen children ran out of their homes one night at 2:17 am. They ran into the street and disappeared into the darkness. They all attend Maybrook Elementary, and all of them were from Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) class. The one student who didn’t leave was Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), who is now quieter and reserved than ever.

Parents of the missing children, including Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), believe that Justine Gandy either had something to do with it or knows where they are. Things turn hostile, and people begin dying in gruesome ways as this seemingly cursed town scrambles for answers.

In 2022, writer and director Zach Cregger wowed audiences and critics with Barbarian. Now Cregger returns with Weapons, a film with a bigger budget, bigger stars, and a more intricate story that intertwines horror, drama, and comedy.

How the children are disappearing can be solved relatively easily while researching the film online, but it’s best to go in blind. Half the charm of Weapons is riding through the mystery as it unravels because it takes some violent and unexpected detours. The film is told through the perspectives of five individuals: Justine, Archer, a cop named Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) who has a complicated relationship with Justine, Alex, and a drug addict named James (Austin Abrams).

Weapons isn’t as shocking or as scary as Barbarian. There are still moments of extreme gore and several moments that take you off guard, but the creepiest parts of Weapons are nightmares that Justine or Archer has. The unsettling sensation is there, but the fact that you know that these are nightmares and the film chooses not to hide that in the slightest makes its impact less potent.

Everything in Weapons is tied to Alex’s aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan). Gladys is incredibly sick and comes to stay with Alex and his parents. She wears a bright red wig, puts on entirely too much red lipstick, and wears vibrant, colored clothes. If it wasn’t for her pale, wrinkly, and sickly looking frame, she’d have a clown-like appearance. She appears in the dreams Justine and Archer are having, and there’s a reason for that.

The film is surprisingly funny. There are several laugh-out-loud moments sprinkled throughout the film, but James is in the film for several important reasons. His motivation is simple for a guy who is constantly tweaking, as he is constantly trying to make money as quickly as he can to get to his next fix. He becomes the comedic catalyst for Paul, and his audible reactions as he’s caught on multiple occasions are amusing. James is the main comic relief of Weapons, but he also stumbles onto the first strong lead of what happened to the missing children.

Camera placement is interesting in weapons as it’s constantly behind the actors. You notice body language more while staring at someone’s back, and it also makes it feel like you’re either following or chasing them the entire film. There’s also an emphasis on doors. There is a specific door to a specific house in the film that is just as threatening closed as it is open. From the outside looking in, there’s no difference. So the threat of not knowing what’s inside and what’s on the other side of that door is always there.

Weapons expands upon Zach Cregger’s storytelling and directing capabilities and offers what is arguably the biggest crowd-pleasing finale of any film this year. It’s much more layered and caters to more than just one specific audience, like Barbarian did. There’s gore and tension, humorous interactions, and the character drama in between keeps you interested throughout.

It’s a well-written and unpredictable story, but it also feels like something is missing. It could be that it isn’t straightforward horror or that its reputation has built it up a bit too much. Weapons is a bonkers mystery that is worth seeing, and Zach Cregger is as bold as ever as a filmmaker, but it simply doesn’t leave you with that same sense of being completely blown away like after viewing Barbarian for the first time.

"WEAPONS" strikes the perfect balance between visceral horror and psychological discomfort. The deeply unsettling premise stems from the simultaneous disappearance of nearly all the students in a class (except one) in a single night, without explanation, creating a constant tension in the narrative. Zach Cregger, in his dual role as director and screenwriter, creates a web of parallel narratives that intertwine with precision, proving emotionally powerful and insidious in its construction of mystery.

The cast - especially Julia Garner as teacher Justine, Josh Brolin in a tormented fatherly role, and Amy Madigan as a sinister, mythical figure - infuses the characters with depth and dramatic intensity.

The technical quality is on par with the performances: Larkin Seiple's cinematography imbues the most disturbing scenes with an almost supernatural light, while the editing pace maintains suspense without resorting to easy solutions. The film doesn't just scare; it makes us think, reflect, and feel the growing panic in the community it portrays.

Overall, "WEAPONS" stands out as a sophisticated and ambitious thriller that goes far beyond conventional horror. Its approach, anchored in symbolic realism and imbued with metaphorical violence, stands as a social and psychological commentary on the contemporary climate of paranoia, evoking, without explicitly stating, echoes of real school tragedies. The tension builds organically and culminates in a brutal climax, yet consistent with the entire preceding development. It's a remarkable cinematic experience, one of those films that crush your mind and continue to resonate even after you leave the theater.

It’s a bit like a wheel with lots of spokes, this mystery. It starts with a scenario in which seventeen kids all get out of bed at precisely 2.17 am, leave their well-appointed homes, only to never been seen again. The cops are baffled and the parents are suspicious. Of what? Well, they were all from the same class of “Justine” (Julia Garner) and the only other pupil to turn up next day: “Alex” (Cary Christopher). What has she done with them all? What does she know? We start with a telling of events from her point of view, then next it’s the perspective of angry parent “Archer” (Josh Brolin) to weave his part of the web; then policemen “Paul” (Alden Ehrenreich); her boss “Marcus” (Benedict Wong) and then, finally, we get the perspective of the only “surviving” pupil who has recently welcomed his eccentric aunt “Gladys” (Amy Madigan) who is apparently on death’s door, and who seems somewhat distracted as he comes to school. Is that because his classmates have all gone awol or maybe he knows more than we think? To be honest, there’s not so much mystery here, but there are some solidly entertaining performances and for the first hour or so, quite a bit of intriguing menace too. The overlaying of each story takes us from similar timelines of the puzzle but never repetitively. Each one of these people has a demon of their own, they are connected to some of the others and not to others, and the whole unravelling process becomes more of a study of small time communities, attitudes and superstitions as it sort of shakes off it’s horror cloak and becomes something altogether more rushed and predictable. Garner, Christopher and Madigan deliver quite well, but Brolin is about as charismatic as a tent pole and as he starts to feature more in the denouement he does rather encourage you to hope that he goes the way of the missing kids. It’s very much at the better end of the genre from 2025 so far, but it still can’t sustain the mysterious “Pied Piper” sense of peril through to an ending that is hardly original.

If a horror flick hopes to succeed, it must fulfill one basic requirement – it has to be scary. Regrettably, however, that’s where the latest offering from writer-director Zach Cregger drops the ball, a downfall brought on by a host of other shortcomings. The film chronicles the mysterious overnight disappearance of all but one student from the third grade class of newly hired teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner). While there’s no direct evidence implicating her in this troubling event, she quickly becomes a target for scrutiny and ridicule, particularly since none of the other elementary school’s classes reported any missing pupils. Officials are at a loss, and the only one of Ms. Gandy’s students who did not vanish, Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), is unable to shed any light on why he was spared the same fate as his classmates. As the investigation continues, Justine’s background – most notably her penchant for alcohol abuse and her tendency to become too involved in the lives of her students – comes under closer examination by the police, the school principal (Benedict Wong) and the father of one of the disappeared children (Josh Brolin). The story is told in a nonlinear fashion with chapters based on the experiences of the film’s primary characters, with each segment gradually (one might more realistically say tediously) revealing different pieces of an enigmatic puzzle as seen from their respective perspectives. Admittedly, this is an interesting and commendable approach for telling the tale, one not typically employed in horror films. However, that narrative is also part of the problem, given that it’s slowly paced and sparsely frightful. It’s also seriously lacking a much-needed revelatory back story, leaving viewers wondering why events are unfolding as they do (and, consequently, leaving them unsure why they should care, either). As the picture plays out, it also loses focus, uncertain whether it wants to be a sinister thriller or a sidesplitting campy romp (I’ll vote for the latter option here, as that seems to be when the picture works best, especially with the arrival of Alex’s mysterious Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), who bears an uncanny and inexplicable resemblance to Bozo the Clown). All things considered, though, these elements don’t hang together well, and, as the film drones on and on, it’s easy to lose interest, especially since the rationale behind them is largely unclear. What’s more, several passing plot devices of a questionably stereotypical nature have been incorporated here as well, leaving one to ponder the reason for their inclusion. “Weapons,” unfortunately, is yet another example of a supposedly scary movie gone wrong, one that fails at its basic task and doesn’t deliver the goods on so many other fronts. Maybe the time has come for Hollywood to give this genre a rest for a while so that it can work out its growing list of issues before production begins on a round of more underwhelming, overhyped releases like this one.