As the years accumulate in my time as a horror critic, I’m growing unwillingly jaded when it comes to my ability to be surprised by the genre. So, when a film like Weapons springs from the shadows and has me screaming at the screen, cackling nervously, and genuinely stressed from start to finish, I can’t help but consider it something of a (bad) miracle.
Like filmmaker Zach Cregger’s previous effort, Barbarian, Weapons is joyously cruel, constantly surprising, brutally funny, and 100% cursed from top to bottom. However, where Barbarian felt like three separate films laminated together, this one is impressively unified. Even with some familiar chapter-based storytelling, it manages to deliver a single, coherent nightmare. This structure could’ve come off as gimmicky in lesser hands, but Cregger uses it with precision to amplify dread, tension, and emotional investment, one carefully calibrated segment at a time.
Weapons offers a multi-perspective horror narrative that spirals around a chilling central mystery: the sudden disappearance of 17 schoolchildren in a quiet American town, all of whom left their beds at exactly 2:17 AM. As grief, suspicion, and paranoia ripple through the community, the film follows a series of seemingly disconnected characters whose stories gradually reveal a sinister and interconnected truth. With each chapter, the dread deepens, building toward a shocking, genre-defying climax unlike anything I’ve ever seen on screen in my life.
Justine, played by Julia Garner (Wolf Man, Ozark), sits at the center of the town’s maddening tragedy. Each of the missing children was part of her middle school classroom, leaving her the ire of confused parents and a community struggling to make sense of the pieces. Archer, played by a pitch-perfectly bewildered Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men), is the father of one of the missing children, and he’s blindingly dedicated to uncovering the truth, no matter the cost. Alden Ehrenreich (Solo) and Benedict Wong (Doctor Strange) also play key citizens of Maybrook—a cop and school principal, respectively.
In the lanky, jagged shadow of Barbarian, I went into Weapons expecting sharp turns. And I got them. But what I didn’t expect was how emotionally wrecked I’d be by the end of things. The story finds its footing through the intersecting lives of characters like Justine and Archer, but it’s the dynamic between young Alex and his grotesque aunt Gladys that truly elevates this film into dimensions previously unseen. Their scenes are electric—unnerving, tender, and sadistically playful. Cary Christopher, as Alex, is just phenomenal. His performance even moved me to tears during a quiet but powerful moment of reconciliation. And let’s face facts, it’s becoming increasingly rare for a horror film to tackle childhood trauma with such originality, effectiveness, and authenticity.
I’m well aware a lot of people have been raving about Bring Her Back, a recent horror release with a number of similar themes—like kids in peril and a very specific supernatural trope that I’ll leave unnamed for the sake of spoilers. Where I found the roots of that film to be dour and recycled, Weapons, on the other hand, gave me everything I want from its menu of classic horror tropes: confidence, cruelty, and a bold refusal to hand-hold. There’s no over-explaining. No drawn-out exposition dumps. Just a filmmaker trusting his audience to keep up.
It’s important for me to pause here, specifically, to mention that Amy Madigan as Gladys is absolutely terrifying in this movie. She delivers an oddly classical performance—like she willed her way out of some grotesque Grimm fairytale and wandered right into Cregger’s world. She’s arch and operatic, but never campy. Cary Christopher, again, is astonishing alongside her on their shared path to hell. And June Diane Raphael? Criminally underused. What she does with her limited screen time is nothing short of brilliant. I wish she had an entire chapter to herself. Weapons 2, when?
This is a perfect or near-perfect film. Still, as a queer viewer, I couldn’t ignore how Weapons treats its two queer characters—especially considering one of them is also its only significant non-white character. Their death scenes were among the film’s most grotesque and prolonged acts of violence by a mile. I understand this wasn’t likely intentional, but it still left me feeling a little wounded. In an era where mainstream queer representation is becoming more and more scarce, the optics here stung. It echoed a kind of old-school “bury your gays” punishment which I couldn’t shake.
Still—brutal, shocking, original, and grotesquely funny all at once—Weapons is a goddamn gift to cinema. Cregger has cemented himself as one of the most exciting voices in genre storytelling today with this one. It’s original. It’s batshit crazy. And it’s a rare gift to still feel surprised as a genre journalist these days. This is exactly why I love horror… or whatever the hell this film is.
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