Movie Review: ‘Weapons’

Plot: One early morning in the rural town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania all the children (save one) in Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) 3rd grade class completely disappear. The event leaves the town traumatized and broken, with citizens like Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) questioning Justine’s possible involvement. What follows is a tangled web of horror involving everyone from elementary school principal Marcus (Benedict Wong), to Justine’s old flame local police officer Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), to homeless drug addict James (Austin Abrams). Yet it is Justine’s student Alex (Cary Christopher) that may hold the key to unraveling the mystery.

Review: You’ll have to excuse me in advance if this review is somewhat scant regarding plot details. However, writer/director Zach Cregger’s Weapons is a movie you want to go into as cold as the arctic in winter. The less you know about Weapons the better your experience will be. It’s like 2022’s The Menu in that regard, although the plots couldn’t be more dissimilar. Suffice it to say that Cregger has crafted a unique and thought provoking film that’s heavy on dread and tension and possesses no shortage of scares. While it’s not quite the masterpiece many critics are making it out to be, Weapons is yet another critical and financial 2025 success story for mainstream, original horror cinema.

As I’ve said, ignorance is a virtue when it comes to Weapons, so I’ll focus my attention on the other cinematic elements of Cregger’s feature. From a technical standpoint, Weapons may be the best directed horror film since William Friedkin’s 1973 masterpiece The Exorcist. That’s not hyperbole, that’s just a fact. Cregger manages a slow burn feature, punctuated by moments of true terror, culminating in a batshit crazy, overtly gory ending that takes its cue from (of all movies) Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. What’s fascinating is that the first half of Weapons plays much more like a character driven tragedy than a horror film. At times Weapons even comes off absurdist and surprisingly funny. While the humor occasionally undermined certain moments for me, it mostly works, with the audience I saw it with laughing as much as they were screaming.

Additionally, I sincerely appreciated how much Cregger allowed the camera to tell the story. Eschewing the modern desire to over edit everything, Cregger utilizes multiple panning and tracking shots throughout Weapons. This gives the impression that something horrific is always pursuing our characters. It’s a characteristic cinematographer Larkin Seiple uses to full effect. Seiple’s camerawork is simply sublime and reminiscent of Owen Roizman’s work. It dovetails nicely with Cregger and Ryan and Hays Holloday’s score, which manages to be equal parts somber and spooky. In fact there are certain scenes in Weapons where Cregger clearly chose not to use music in order to heighten the tension. The absence of music can sometimes be just as effective as its presence in a horror film.

Every single acting performance in Weapons is top notch. It’s structured in such as way that we see events from the perspective of Justine, Archer, Paul, James, Marcus, and Alex respectively. Garner’s Justine is ostensibly the “heroine” of the Weapons, although she’s someone you sympathize and pity more than root for. She’s in no way a one dimensional character, with Cregger showing her to be a closet alcoholic and more volatile than you might expect. Brolin’s Archer meanwhile is so consumed by his grief that it’s infected every aspect of his personal life, causing him to cross dangerous boundaries that a rational man would not. But no one ever said grief was rational. Ehrenreich also continues to carve out a nice post-Solo career with his Paul character more nuanced than you might expect. However, it was the performances of Austin Abrams as James and Cary Christopher as Alex that really impressed me. Despite being a thief and a junkie, James provides one of the most objective perspectives on the entire tragedy while simultaneously garnering the most laughs. He also proves pivotal to Weapons‘ plot. Meanwhile, Cary Christopher is nothing less than a revelation as Alex. I was flabbergasted that a nine year old could give such a nuanced, poignant, and heartbreaking performance. Alex generates the most empathy for his plight, having to deal with a familial malignancy as if it were normal. Sensational doesn’t begin to cover it.

There’s also the question of the ultimate meaning behind Weapons. Or if you prefer, “What exactly is Weapons about?” Weirdly, there’s been some discourse that Weapons isn’t about anything. I’m here to say that is patently absurd. At the very least, Weapons is a meditation on grief and how grief – especially collective grief – can be all encompassing, even self destructive. The theme of grief in Weapons is something Cregger has addressed repeatedly. He wrote Weapons as a cathartic response to the death of his longtime collaborator and friend Trevor Moore. Yet beyond that, the meaning behind Weapons depends on the viewer. Intentionality doesn’t necessarily matter when a piece of art is released into the world. As Yoda said in response to Luke Skywalker’s question of “What’s in there?” the answer is “Only what you take with you.” There’s a case to be made that Weapons is about school shootings and gun violence in America. Concurrently, there’s a strong argument that Weapons deals with how social media, and by extension the Internet, can warp our children into something we no longer recognize. Hell you can even make an argument that this movie is about the devastating impacts of alcoholism. Great horror as I’ve stated on numerous occasions is always talking about something else. The same holds true for Weapons.

I have only one major gripe when it comes to Weapons and it’s something from my perspective that prevents Cregger’s film from moving into the upper echelon of all-time great horror films. The crux of Weapons concerns why 17 children disappear one night without a trace. It’s a mystery that ultimately resolves itself in the third act. However, I found the reason to be incredibly pedestrian and commonplace. It left me thinking, “Really that’s it? That’s the reason?” Fortunately, the directing, acting, writing, cinematography, and story execution counterbalance the reason behind the mystery. The result is one of the best horror flicks of the year and a film that’s well worth your time.

My rating system:

1 God Awful Blind Yourself With Acid Bad

2 Straight Garbage

3 Bad

4 Sub Par

5 Average

6 Ok

7 Good

8 Great

9 Excellent

10 A Must See

Masterpiece

Weapons: 8/10