'Weapons' Review: Equal Parts Terror and Humor, All Unsettling
Zach Cregger's latest toys with its audience, to truly unhinged ends.
It’s a rare and delightful treat to be truly surprised by a film. Not just in the content, but in the feelings evoked. From its very first trailer, Weapons sparked interest — and theories. What would Zach Cregger return with after the success of Barbarian?
The answer: A jarring, roller-coaster ride of a film that brandishes a stacked arsenal of the uneasy, the uncertain, and the unhinged to completely throw the viewer off the scent. Weapons is tense, genuinely scary, weirdly hilarious, and — frankly — a “WTF?” cinema experience.
Weapons opens on a chilling statement of facts:
LAST NIGHT
AT 2:17 AM
EVERY CHILD
FROM MRS. GANDY’S CLASS
WOKE UP
GOT OUT OF BED
WENT DOWNSTAIRS
OPENED THE FRONT DOOR
WALKED OUT INTO THE DARK
… AND THEY NEVER CAME BACK.
Who else has the heebie-jeebies?
The quiet suburb of Maybrook is rocked by tragedy. Seventeen of eighteen children, all from the same elementary school classroom, have vanished overnight. All that remains are disturbing videos caught on neighborhood security cameras. Each child leaves their house seemingly at will and races off into the darkness, arms outstretched almost playfully. As days bleed into months and efforts by law enforcement turn up nothing, distraught parents find solace in rage. In particular rage toward the kids’ teacher, Mrs. Justine Gandy (Julia Garner).
Equally desperate for answers, Justine endeavors to uncover the truth. In tightly interwoven chapters, the characters and audience collectively discover the bizarre circumstances that led to this horrific occurrence. A heartbroken father (Josh Brolin) refuses to give up the search for his son. A school administrator (Benedict Wong) and a distracted police officer (Alden Ehrenreich) struggle to clean up the mess of their own lives, while managing a town in crisis.
By the time the pieces come together, it may be too late.
Weapon’s particular brand of suburban despair has a lingering quality, primarily due to its political posturing. To clarify: Weapons is not a film burdened by its messaging. It’s not an inherently political film. It is not a film about child mortality in schools the way that, say, Midsommar is a film about grief.
What Cregger does instead is utilize our own assumptions, trends in “elevated horror”, and the cultural touchstones of the moment to both distract and to add necessary weight to where the film is headed. As each scene is presented in a series of vignettes — individual stories of people close to the case of the missing children — themes float to the surface. Cregger serves up bite-sized commentaries on the wounds that tragedies like school shootings inflict on communities, themes of police brutality and addiction, and allegories to child abuse and neglect.
The overall effect is a deep sense of loss and uncertainty. When so much evil hides behind white picket fences, how can we hope to protect ourselves — much less our children? Perhaps it is this internal rot that makes towns like Maybrook an attractive option for all that’s dark in the world?
So much of what makes Weapons work rests in gut-reactions. It’s the “WTF” factor. As viewers, we are carried right along with the assumptions of the Maybrook parents and susceptible to our own need to work out the mystery. Every gut-check on a situation or character is quickly refuted. The audience is punished for any attempt to guess; Cregger insists we stay seated and wait.
Jump scares and absolutely unhinged splatter horror balance beautifully with hair-trigger tension. I found myself holding my breath just as often as I did releasing a nervous chuckle. Weapons thrives on the unexpected and goes to great lengths to keep the audience on their toes. Some might make the argument that Weapons is unfocused in this way; I prefer to think of it as unseating.
Weapons is at its best on a shaky foundation. The truth behind the disappearances comes out of left field, earning more than one whispered “What the ****?” from this critic. Being “caught unawares” is more than just a valuable tool for building suspense, it’s an incredibly fun way to take in a film. Weapons is FUN!
And creepy. We can’t forget that.
Weapons is a testament to Cregger’s intention and craftsmanship. It is a film that understands, at the molecular level, what it is to be uncomfortable, how that discomfort turns to tension, and where tension snaps into terror and hysteria. Fascinating to the very end and satisfying in its final breaths, Weapons manipulates the viewer with wicked precision.
Rating: 8/10
Weapons opens exclusively in theaters on August 8, 2025.
