In an age where trailers frequently reveal not only the basic premise of a film but many of its major beats and a raft of potential spoilers, there’s often a feeling that you have already seen the entire thing before you sit down in the auditorium or settle on to the couch. It’s rare that you get to go into the experience with both anticipation and yet little knowledge of what is about to happen. But, occasionally, the marketing of a film walks the tightrope well – dropping enough candies of information to make you want to pick them up and follow, but still keeping things so close to the chest that you have absolutely no idea what the destination will be. For 2025, that rare film is Weapons and while not for the squeamish nor those who want their meal carefully spooned out in generic fashion, it is a ‘horror’ film that absolutely excels in grabbing you from the outset and pulling you along in its wake.
Zach Cregger may once have been known better as a sketch-writer, but his follow-up to his acclaimed 2022 thriller Barbarian has been at the edge of the radar for several months after the script created a bidding-war. All that was revealed in advance was a fast-paced trailer and a limited teaser campaign consisting of a short premise, one spelled out on the promotional poster. “Last night at 2:17am every child from Mrs. Gandy’s class woke up, got out of bed, went downstairs, opened the front door, walked into the dark… and they never came back.”
It’s a superb narrative hook, one that immediately speaks to loss of innocence on an emotional and a real, physical level, a horror concept built on unexplained absence with which everyone can identify and fear on an innate level. But Weapons not only has a hook, it has excellent execution in its sights. On one hand, it edges around traditional horror film territory, but it is also a subversive story, submerged deep within the primal reaction to such an event, with the demand for answers coming from the characters as well as the audience. It’s consistently uncomfortable viewing, but always ambitious.
Amid Cregger’s accomplished direction – both in the toxic bread-crumb trail it follows in pursuit of the town’s missing children and in the visuals that he and cinematographer Larkin Seiple create – there’s some savvy misdirection in story-telling that feels alternately grounded and wild. (Despite the fact that there’s a scene with an almost demonic clown and askew kids staring eerily into the distance with possessed eyes, this isn’t Stephen King territory, though one presumes he’d like it). The townsfolk, often heard or discussed before we actually see them, might be driven to act in unreasonable ways by fear, but their suspicions are not entirely unreasonable in and of themselves and the audience is also drawn that way as you try to mentally slide pieces around ahead of reveals.
Weapons not only has a hook, it has excellent execution in its sights. On one hand, it edges around traditional horror film territory, but it is also a subversive story, submerged deep within the primal reaction to such an event, with the demand for answers coming from the characters as well as the audience. It’s consistently uncomfortable viewing, but always ambitious….
If the trailer suggested that Julie Garner’s Justine Gandy would be the main pivot of the plot as the possibly-culpable teacher, we actually get the film divided up more equally between its ensemble. There’s a carousel of interlocking Rashomon-esque viewpoints and chapters, the audience getting to experience events before and after the fateful night, slowly peeling back things we’ve seen or heard and often giving them a new or fuller context. After Gandy’s introduction, we get Josh Brolin’s desolate father, Archer, as a man frustrated that no answers are apparent and feeling Gandy must know more than she’s saying. Alden Ehrenreich (Solo) is Paul, a dissatisfied and impulsive cop who is trying to balance his personal circumstances with his frustrations; Benedict Wong is Gandy’s principal, trying to avoid further chaos and Austin Abrams (Euphoria) is James, a junkie whose desperation leads to questions about what is real or a hallucination. Cary Christopher as Alex, the only child not to be taken that night, also becomes a compelling force and particularly impresses as we move through to the final chapter.
Garner (Ozark, Inventing Anna Fantastic Four), an actor whose performances regularly bristle with tension and complexity – and not always as completely sympathetic characters – rises to the challenge with aplomb here. Gandy is shown as a teacher who can be something of her own worst enemy. The burden of being the person everyone suspects of having the answers to the children’s disappearance is a heavy one to add to a load that already includes disciplinary proceedings for supposedly ‘inappropriate’ behaviour and a consistently messy love-life. She makes a series of bad choices, but as pressure mounts, a scene where she basically loads up with booze and heads to the possible sanctuary of her home feels entirely understandable. Brolin, another actor who can move between summer blockbusters (the Avengers movies) and smaller, independent and nuanced fare, always finds an emotional core and you may not like all of Archer’s actions, but you sympathise. Each actor brings something deep and important.
And there’s an almost unrecognisable Amy Madigan as Gladys, introduced later in the film and whose unique persona has a profound effect on those circling her orbit. Madigan, grabbing the role with both hands, is simply quite extraordinary.
Ultimately, though, there’s solid chemistry between all the actors and in a collectively memorable outing, everyone here brings their A-game, even before you see their faces.
The film was originally set to be made several years ago with an almost entirely different cast (Pedro Pascal would have had the Josh Brolin role). However, the writers strike and then conflicts of scheduling meant that Cregger had to start from the ground up once more. While it’s interesting to speculate what the film would have been like had it lensed earlier, the 2025 result is certainly a triumph of tone and tension. Despite the dark subject-matter, there’s flashes of humour throughout. As is often the case in turbulent confusion or tragedy, the sheer absurdity of it all allows moments that can be acknowledged as ridiculous as they are serious, dialogue or actions that break the tension for a few seconds before pulling you back under like a riptide. A moment in the last few minutes of the film will likely have you laughing out loud, seconds before shifting nervously in your seat as the fate of another character becomes clear.
It’s quite hard to review Weapons as a story without revealing some of what is going on and the ebb and flow of reveals that we get to see. Given the way that everyday life changes for the community (the fictional town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania) and individuals after the event, some pundits have said that the film is rich in socially-important metaphors ranging from the impact of COVID through to gun-control, though, perhaps wisely, such touchstones are questionable, subjective and ephemeral. The director has distanced himself from any specific analogy except to say that some of his personal ideas surrounding how we deal with grief (Cregger lost his close friend and writing collaborator Trevor Moore in a sudden accident) are important. There’s visceral tension throughout, generated less by some solid-enough jump-scares and more by a slow build and the knowledge that something is very wrong here, even before the bubble bursts.
Your enjoyment of Weapons may rest on how you view those answers, its imagery and eventual revelations, though the way the film glides and slithers between the extremes of natural resentments and supernatural and gothic-fabled possibilities keeps you invested. When emotions boil over we understand why, when bursts of violence happen, they are all the more effective because of the build to them.
Though Cregger doesn’t tie everything up in a bow by the time the credits roll, this is not one of those frustrating films where premise is king, but where the conclusion is then frustratingly lazily or ambiguously scattershot (a crime frequently perpetuated by the likes of M. Night Shyamalan). For those wanting and needing some rationale for the events – a perfectly fair request in an age where, far too often, a film loses itself in an underwritten third act – there are enough answers to explain the whos and whats of events, though just enough questions left hanging to provoke discussion later.
In an overflowing market this isn’t designed as a franchise film, but there’s some murmurings about a potential prequel, casting some light into the shadowed corners of the plot that might actually benefit from staying as unknown, outlier elements. One hopes there’s not an outright sequel. Yes, in a perfect world, I’d like the film to either be one minute shorter or one minute longer (only because of the lingering questions the epilogue from our unknown narrator leaves) but I didn’t feel cheated by the conclusion and nor would I want another feature to substantially add to the story as is.
With the likes of Mike Flanagan and Zach Cregger on the film-making scene, the horror genre is getting new blood and a true, worthy renaissance. Cregger’s next film will be a reboot of gaming phenomenon Resident Evil, but in the meantime, it’s this superior story of residential evil that holds the attention…
- Story10
- Acting10
- Direction10
- Production Design / VFX10
