WEAPONS (2025)

Now streaming on HBO MAX from New Line Cinema and Warner Brothers!
Directed/Written by Zach Cregger.
Check out the trailer here!!

When every child in one particular class runs off in the middle of the night, all fingers are pointed in one direction. That of their teacher Justine (Julia Garner), who has no idea where the children have gone. The only child left in the class, Alex ( Cary Christopher), claims to not know anything about the disappearances either. This bizarre occurrence sets into motion a series of horrors unlike anything this small town has seen before.

Zach Cregger burst out of nowhere to bring us the highly imaginative BARBARIAN a few years ago, and after that he became the talk of the town. There was a bidding war to produce his next film, WEAPONS, and anticipation was high once the vague images of kids running, their arms bizarrely out to their sides, disappearing into the night. Before I get into the review, I have to say that in terms of getting me stoked for a movie, this teaser trailer worked in so many ways. Sure it had a lot of creepy imagery and a forboding tone, but it didn’t throw the entire plot at you as so many trailers do today. As with BARBARIAN, WEAPONS simply gives you how the movie opens and that’s it, suggesting all hell will break loose, but never specifying what particular type of hell. First and foremost, and I hope someone out there cutting trailers is listening, THIS is the way to get people interested in your movie. And don’t just listen to me. That mysterious trailer is what got so many people out to see WEAPONS, making it one of the surprise hits of the summer. Now, I don’t pay a lot of heed to box office, but I do love big budget horror done right. Mostly because it so rarely is done right (see most Blumhouse releases this year and for many, many years before that). I hope this trend of an intriguing trailer that gives nothing away will set a new trend in horror trailers, but I doubt it. Nothing says I have little faith in my movie like a trailer that gives the entire film away.

The movie WEAPONS itself, I found to be equally excellent. As with last year’s STRANGE DARLING, Cregger separates the story into overlapping chapters, in this case focusing on one particular character, each holding back secrets that other characters and the audience are not privy to. Making a story like this is like putting together a puzzle for the audience, and WEAPONS never takes the audience by the hand and leads you to put this stuff together. It simply gives some information, as with an early scene where Julia’s ex Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) has a bandage on his hand when she meets him in a bar, but it isn’t explained why. Later during Paul’s vignette, we see what gruesome thing happened to his hand and the payoff is so much greater having kept that info under wraps when the character was introduced. This type of twisted tango with the script is what makes WEAPONS a film you can watch over and over, noticing little beats hinted at early, then paid off later. Details that seem insignificant turn out to be big deals, making you pay attention to the little stuff in the corners all the more. This made me laser focus on every detail in WEAPONS, hoping to figure out the story, yet being utterly surprised at the creative way the story unfolds. This non-linear way of storytelling not only challenged the viewer to pay attention, but it also amplifies the investment 100-fold, not unlike how many found footage horror films amplify that interest visually. So basically what films like STRANGE DARLING and now, WEAPONS is doing is making the narrative version of a found footage film, if you catch what I’m drifting.

It’s this unpredictability that makes WEAPONS so much fun. Yes, there is a main threat and I’ll get to that. But the way everyone is having their own struggles in each vignette, even the shortest ones such as the one focusing on Principal Marcus (Benedict Wong) or junkie James (Austin Abrams) present challenges for that particular character. The genius in the script is that all of these problems fly around the major threat like moths at a lamp, but like the parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant, none of them see the major problem until it is too late. It is the way Cregger intricately places these little seeds of info into each segment, seeds that eventually give us the cause of all of these problems is where WEAPONS succeeds so well. This is an amazing script above all else. One deserving to be studied on its own to understand how to reveal a mystery inch by painstaking inch.

The ensemble cast is wonderful as well. I was unimpressed by Julia Garner in WOLF MAN, but she shows that when given the right script, she can shine. Here she plays a textured woman dealing with alcoholism and a difficulty with boundaries when it comes to her job. Two difficulties that are intertwined and while we don’t know the cause of them, we don’t need to since this is such an immediate story. Garner and Clegger gives just enough info to tell us that she is a flawed, yet sympathetic character mixed up in all this. The same goes for the other lead of the film Archer (Josh Brolin) who is the father of one of the kids who has gone missing. Archer is not a parfect parent. He is wracked with guilt when is son disappears and punishes himself for not telling his boy he loves him, even hinting that there might have been some kind of abuse going on that Archer may regret subtly wedged in there. Archer lets his rage take the better of him and he lashes out at Justine because she is an easy, weaker target. As with Garner’s character, Brolin’s Archer has very bad flaws, but since the vignettes are focusing on each of them, we see redeemable reasons making them worth following as well. This can be said for most of the other cast. Benedict Wong is good as the principal, giving a professional yet compassionate performance as someone who is in the middle of this big predicament and trying to keep things in control. Austin Adams as the junkie James provides some great comic relief as he attempts to score his next high and bumbles and stumbles his way into the middle of it all. The lone child left behind, Alex, is played particularly well by Cary Christopher, a shining example of the abused child who is smart enough to know how to read the dangers of a situation and when to act and not act. Christopher’s arc comes late in the game, revealing a lot of what is going on, so though much of the film, he’s just this shy little kid. But once his arc arrives, it is the final piece of the puzzle linking it all together and the little boy’s performance only amplifies this revelatory segment. Finally, I have to give Alden Ehrenreich his due credit. He got a bad rap with SOLO, a role that was doomed to fail no matter what he did with it. Since then with COCAINE BEAR (he was the best part of that film, BTW) and now WEAPONS, the guy really does show he has wonderful comic timing and an everyman feel that should make him a star. I hope the actor can shed that SOLO baggage and shine as he really does provide some of the best character moments in the film as well as undergoes some of the worst horrors one could imagine.

Finally, our main antagonist, Gladys, played excellently by Amy Madigan, is truly a new horror icon for the modern age. Looking like the long lost sister to last years’ iconic killer LONGLEGS or maybe some distant relative of Tiny Tim, Gladys truly is the stuff of nightmares, from her puckered face to her bizarre wigs. Madigan is amazingly versatile, giving a truly threatening performances from such a frail body. Madigan’ Gladys is truly horrifying to look at, but she also provides some darkly funny scenes as well as she struggles to keep all of this chaos together as the story goes on. It’s interesting that she is a flawed horror villain, rather than some omniscient terrible force. That is what makes her something different and still wholly formed.

Cregger definitely doesn’t hold back with showing what the influences for WEAPONS. And they come from some unconventional places, given that this is a horror film. MAGNOLIA seems to factor significantly with WEAPONS. Not only the structure, but the beginning with an unnatural event occurring and then affecting the rest of the stories throughout, as well as the whole bumbling cop trying to do good theme as John C. Reilly’s character is very much the same in tone as Paul’s. There are shades of PULP FICTION and PRISONERS in there as well regarding some key performances and the terrifying use of needles. Plus the whole film feels like those old evil kid films like THE CHILDREN, a schlocky film a love so very much. And the shifting POV of the story definitely has roots leading back to ROSHOMON. There’s even a chase scene towards the end ripped right from the Huggies scene from RAISING ARIZONA. You’ll notice that all of these films Cregger references are not other horror films, but comedies, dramas, and tragedies. That should be a lesson to modern filmmakers. Don’t pull simply from your genre when making a film. If you pull from another genre and then twist it to fit into the genre you prefer, the stories feel as fresh as WEAPONS does.

So what is WEAPONS about? It’s ethereal, but Cregger has gone on record saying that it is about the horrors of alcoholism. Seeing the substance abuse problems and family trauma used throughout WEAPONS makes that understandable. Seeing Alex have to go to school hiding dark secrets at home is a clear example of a child coping with alcoholic parents. Both Justine and Paul deal with alcoholism in different ways. The metaphor of the parasite referenced to throughout the film can be seen as a way to discuss alcoholism as a disease that drains the host dry slowly and without the host knowing it. So, yeah, I can see where this theme might be seen as the lesson WEAPONS is trying to teach us.

At the same time, WEAPONS seems to draw from today’s headlines. The setting of the initial tragedy in a school is reminiscent of the debate parents and school teachers are having these days about when is the right time and from whom sexual education and gender studies should be taught to the children. Seeing the townhall meeting with screaming parents pointing their fingers at the school board is a picture all too familiar these days. One of my least favorite scenes of the film, the only time it feels as if Cregger is holding the hand of the viewer, is a dream Archer has where a giant machine gun is hovering in the air over his house. It seems to be using the metaphor to speak of school shooting and gun violence in America’s youth. While these are serious issues, it definitely was the least interesting of the metaphors Cregger plays with here. I’d much rather see the gun scene as a metaphor for parental negligence or even parental grooming towards as dangerous path, as this metaphor does appear in Archer’s dream, who is full of regret in regards to how he treated his son. The repeated mention of parasites seems to be talking about an unseen force sneaking in and corrupting the children without anyone knowing it. This could mean a ton of things other than alcoholism, such as the influence of popular culture, social media, and peer pressure, leading the children to do and succumb to dire circumstances. It also refers to the way Gladys was able to weed her way into the community and strike without anyone knowing.

The use of 2:17, which is the time Archer and Justine keep waking up at, as well as the time the kids all woke up and left their homes, seems to be an obscure reference to ROOM 217 in the original novel THE SHINING (I just learned that the resort Kubrick filmed at for the film made him change the room number from 217 to 237 for the movie). I’ve also heard it meaning that it referring to the 17 kids disappearing and Justine and Archer being the only 2 searching for them. I don’t know. And honestly, it seems such an obscure little thing that it doesn’t seem as consequential. Maybe you have a different theory.

In the end, Zach Cregger has delivered a depthy themed, intricately plotted, and fascinatingly scripted classic with WEAPONS. He is definitely a new force of nature in the horror genre and I hope he stays in this genre as it needs some new titans making new kinds of horror. WEAPONS is definitely a crowd pleaser, referencing everything from classic cinema to its framing as a modern retelling of the Pied Piper fable. WEAPONS is going to be one of those films I return to again and again and I’m sure every time I’ll notice something new. I highly recommend this ground-breaking horror film that, for once, lives up to the hype and deserves every accolade tossed at it.