Weapons (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
Aug 7
3 min read

Updated: Aug 13

WEAPONS (2025)

Starring Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, Amy Madigan, Sara Paxton, Justin Long, June Diane Raphael, Clayton Farris, Whitmer Thomas, Callie Schuttera, Toby Huss, Luke Speakman, Austin Abrams, Melissa Ponzio, Jonathan Auguste, Sergio Duque, Cary Christopher, Sarah Kopkin and Jaymes Butler.

Screenplay by Zach Cregger.

Directed by Zach Cregger.

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. 128 minutes. Rated R.

A few years ago, former comic Zach Cregger had a bit of a surprise cult hit with his first film, a horror called Barbarian. Barbarian actually had a fantastic concept and an interesting structure – flitting back and forth between characters and time periods to tell its story. For the first half-hour or so, it was fantastic, but then the wheels seemed to come off the story. While in the end I didn’t like Barbarian – the more you learned about what was happening the sillier it got – it was a moody and creepy film that showed some promise for its young filmmaker.

Three years later, Cregger is back with his follow-up, Weapons. And while Weapons uses many of the same stylistic tricks – flitting from character to character, going back and forth in time, reshowing scenes at different points from different perspectives – I will readily acknowledge that Cregger has done a much better job of holding his story together. He eventually does write himself into a corner and the ending is kind of ridiculous again, but overall this is a much better film.

It takes about two-thirds of the movie before it starts to spin out this time, and while the climax is a bit silly, the movie itself mostly works.

Even more so than Barbarian, Cregger has come up with a terrifically gripping, chilling concept. As the movie poster concisely puts it: “Last night at 2:17 AM, every child from Mrs. Gandy’s class woke up, got out of bed, went downstairs, opened the front door, walked into the dark… and they never came back.”

That is any parent’s nightmare.

However, Weapons is not so much about the children, at least not directly. They are rarely seen in the film, although eventually we do get an explanation of what happened to them. It is much more about the dazed and mournful community which they left behind.

The film is – at different points – told from the perspective of the teacher of the disappeared class (Julia Garner), the obsessive father of one of the children (Josh Brolin), a corrupt local cop (Alden Ehrenreich), the harried school principal (Benedict Wong), a junkie who stumbles on some information about the kids (Austin Abrams), and the one child from the class who remains (Cary Christopher).

As a nod to Barbarian, there are cameo appearances – as parents of one of the disappeared children – by Justin Long and Sara Paxton (who is also the filmmaker’s wife) who had both been in the earlier film.

It tells a complicated, confounding story which has to do with greed, lust, hatred and witchcraft. The audience slowly puts together what is happening through the eyes of many witnesses.

Sadly, as noted earlier, the actual explanation is a bit of a letdown. (And, honestly, I’d figured out what was happening well before the film actually comes out and explains things.)

Still, even more than with Barbarian, this new movie shows some distinct promise for Cregger as a filmmaker. If he can only stop writing himself into corners – and if he tones down a bit of the violence – he will probably make some truly fascinating films. I’m looking forward to what he comes up with next.

Jay S. Jacobs