Weapons Movie Review
An Eerie, Mysterious Puzzle
It’s 2.17 am in the small town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, and something unimaginable is happening. Dozens of children are simultaneously waking up, running down the stairs, and bolting outside. Why did they run, and where did they go? Nobody knows.
All of the students are part of a third grade class taught by Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), a troubled and emotionally immature young woman who treats the kids more like peers than students. Only one child from her class, Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), remains. He and his parents claim to know nothing about what has transpired.
Weeks pass. The police are baffled. Parents are outraged. Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), the father of one of the missing kids, is sure that Justine is behind the disappearances. He’s determined to find out the truth, even as the police warn him to let them handle the investigation.
Archer is also privately struggling with guilt. He believes that he should have prevented his son’s disappearance.
That’s the setup for Weapons, the sophomore effort of Zach Cregger, the director of Barbarian. Like his first film, Cregger effectively sets up a creepy mystery that gradually gets untangled as the story progresses. Weapons has a nonlinear structure that bounces back and forth chronologically as it switches between the points of view of several different characters.
The standout performance belongs to Julia Garner, who seizes the opportunity to play a fascinating role after portraying a generic “concerned wife and mother” character in Wolf Man (2025). Her acting talents were wasted in the previous film. This time, she plays a unique and deeply flawed antihero who becomes a convenient target for the community’s fear and outrage.
Justine’s life is riddled with questionable and unethical behavior, particularly her obsession with wanting to talk privately about the disappearances with eight-year-old Alex, who is the only student remaining from her class.
While the rest of the town suspects her, Justine believes that Alex knows more than he’s letting on. She seems indifferent to the fact that her behavior is perceived as, at best, unprofessional, and at worst, extremely creepy. She is tormented by terrifying dreams and visions, including one where Alex eerily stares at her while wearing Joker-like makeup.
Cregger can’t resist using the stale “character wakes up from a dream, but then something scary happens, and she realizes that she’s still dreaming” cliche. Seriously, folks, this scare tactic was already old in the ’80s. Leave it alone.
Still, Justine is a refreshingly original character. Cregger could have taken the easy way out and made her a noble martyr, but that would have been boring. Besides, it’s easier for people to blame somebody when they’re already disliked in the first place.
An Allegory About Societal Scapegoats
It’s not hard to interpret Weapons as an allegory for some of the most serious issues that plague modern society, particularly school shootings. Visions of a floating assault rifle are seen several times throughout the film.
The Maybrook parents have lost their children, possibly forever, and they’re looking for someone or something to blame. Due to ignorance and/or clinging to preconceived notions and biases, they end up blaming scapegoats instead of focusing on the actual problems.
Weapons is more subtle about its allegorical elements than 2025’s other major original horror hit, Sinners, but the themes are still clearly embedded in the story. Cregger may have had political controversies over climate change and pandemic restrictions in mind as well.
There’s so much that I could say about this movie’s ending, but I don’t want to give too much away. Cregger combines elements from several horror subgenres, including some that you wouldn’t normally see together.
For a movie that’s relatively restrained for most of its runtime, Weapons goes hog wild with the gore during a key sequence near the end. I can’t even vaguely tell you what it’s about without major spoilers, but I’ll say that the MPAA ratings board sure has become more lenient over the years (which is a great thing for horror).
Thirty or forty years ago, this gruesome scene would easily have resulted in Weapons getting slapped with an X rating.
There isn’t much wrong with this movie, but I tend to dislike it when horror movies are more than two hours long. Genre films generally should be on the shorter side. It’s tough to maintain tension for 2+ hours, and Weapons‘ mid-story pacing could be better at times.
Rating
Weapons is the most atmospheric horror film of 2025 so far. Zach Cregger avoids the sophomore slump with an effort that cements him as a rising star in the horror genre.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 8.5
