Weapons (dir. Zach Cregger)

by Jack Martin | Aug 8, 2025

Certificate: 18

Running Time: 128 mins

UK Distributor: Warner Bros

UK Release Date: 8 August 2025

WHO’S IN WEAPONS?

Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, Amy Madigan, June Diane Raphael, Clayton Farris, Whitmer Thomas, Toby Huss, Luke Speakman

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Zach Cregger (director, writer, producer, composer), Roy Lee, J.D. Lifshitz, Raphael Margules and Miri Yoon (producers), Hays Holladay and Ryan Holladay (composers), Larkin Seiple (cinematographer), Joe Murphy (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

An entire class of children mysteriously disappears…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON WEAPONS?

If you were to ask for my immediate response to filmmaker Zach Cregger’s Weapons after leaving the auditorium, I would label it a disappointment. After hearing so many critics and audiences rave about this movie and the wild turns that it takes, I was excited to see how insane it gets, only to find that where it all leads is… rather lame. After such a strong two-thirds of build-up and suspense, to see it fall apart with a seemingly trite and nonsensical conclusion made me feel as though I had been trolled, expecting something bonkers on the same level as Cregger’s previous directorial outing Barbarian but instead getting something that’s no scarier or logical than the bedtime stories I was told as a child.

And right there, whilst going over it in my head, is when it hit me like a ton of bricks: Weapons is attempting to be a modern-day fairy tale. Specifically, one that the Brothers Grimm would have come up with were they alive today, complete with weird and rather disturbing plot beats designed to make little sense because that’s the kind of logic it’s working with. We don’t question why Hansel and Gretel shove an old lady living in a giant candy house into her oven, nor why a wolf can convincingly disguise herself as a red-cloaked girl’s grandmother, so what’s the sense in querying even half the stuff that unfolds here, since it’s all just a twisted fairy tale?

As soon as I came to that conclusion, I found myself warming a lot more to Weapons. Perhaps not as much as other critics, but enough to where I can at least respect and admire what it’s doing, even if it doesn’t completely come together by the end.

Cregger’s film opens with narration stating that one morning, at precisely 2:17am, all but one of the children in schoolteacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) suddenly got out of bed and ran with arms stretched out like airplanes before mysteriously vanishing. It then proceeds to show us the aftermath of such a strange event, split into several chapters told from the perspective of numerous individuals involved. First, we follow Justine as she’s blamed for the disappearance and essentially ostracised from the community at large; then, we’re with Archer (Josh Brolin), a father of one of the missing children who’s desperately conducting his own investigation; next, we see one of the cops on the case, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), going about his increasingly chaotic day; and so on, until the point of view falls to less and less likely individuals – among them Austin Abrams as a crackhead – who, funnily enough, may end up uncovering all the answers.

The first two-thirds of Weapons are legitimately strong, as Cregger creates an escalating LEGO tower of suspense from all the pieces of information he drip-feeds the viewer, and dives into each of his central characters to find out what drives them all and how they react to certain things. One could certainly place it next to Magnolia or Rashomon in how it effortlessly manoeuvres from one perspective to another and forms a complete image across its wide canvas, with these characters all connected through their inner guilt and grief, or sometimes even their blasé passivity, to the inciting incident that opens the movie. There’s also some fierce filmmaking on display here, with grim cinematography making every single dark corner in this film as transfixing as they are terrifying, and some well-tuned jump-scares and creepy dream sequences that get an earned reaction, often without unnecessary loud music stingers either. The acting is also solid across the board, as the likes of Julia Garner and Josh Brolin all deliver turns that communicate their characters’ inner monologues without ever audibly expressing them, and at points aren’t afraid to make them seem less sympathetic.

Then, we reach the final stretch. Truth be told, it’s nigh-on impossible to specify what does and doesn’t work without getting into heavy spoilers, and like Barbarian before it, Weapons is the kind of film you need to go in knowing as little as possible. That being said, you’ll know exactly when things begin to take a turn toward that fairy tale aesthetic, as the performances suddenly get a lot campier and the tone fluctuates toward something of a dark – you might even say, grim(m) – comedy with horror elements, while the logic becomes more and more flexible as you try to piece together how certain stuff is supposed to work or why specific people do what they do. Unlike most fairy tales, though, there isn’t really much of a message underneath it all, and it can come across as a series of escalating sketches building toward an admittedly amusing punchline, but one could argue that Cregger is simply doing what the most effective fairy tales do which is, quite simply, scare the audience to where they’ll having nightmares of the frightening and logic-defying imagery they’re describing until they understand the intended morals. In that sense, Weapons succeeds more than it doesn’t.

Though I can’t say it’s a complete success, as there are mild frustrations with the lack of motivation in certain parts and the ending feels too abrupt for something that requires a lot more information than what we’re given, this is a much more interesting and ambitious movie than it at first seemed to be, at least for me. Cregger has crafted a fairy tale that the Brothers Grimm would be envious of, one that is both creepy and entertaining, but also a lot smarter than what appears to be written on the surface.

All the better to scare us with, to paraphrase one of the Grimms’ most famous fairy tales.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Weapons is a chilling modern-day fairy tale that builds genuine suspense and terror with strong filmmaking and solid performances from its ensemble, leading toward a third act that doesn’t completely come together but smartly embraces its own illogical storytelling for an effective final stretch.