Weapons Hits its Target

Zach Cregger made his mark as a horror director in 2022 with Barbarian (2022), a nightmarish patriarchal allegory that shook viewers to their core with its intense visuals, occasional laughs, and disturbing premise. He returns with Weapons (2025), a film that improves upon all the best parts of its predecessor. The characters are much more relatable to viewers, the jokes land better, and the main themes of addiction and abuse are more successfully woven into the narrative. This film, which built suspense in a unique way, had people in theaters go from cackling to cowering within seconds. This is what makes Weapons so special—laughing along with strangers and then feeling the air shift into a palpable sense of dread builds community out of a theater. 

The movie opens with a chilling narration. A young girl describes how, in her town not long ago, Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) entire fourth-grade class went missing—all except for one student. The night before, “at 2:17 in the morning, every other kid woke up, got out of bed, walked downstairs, opened the front door, walked across the front yard, and they never came back.” This first scene phenomenally establishes the film’s main mystery: Why did the children leave, and why only the ones from Ms. Gandy’s class? The highlight of the film is slowly untangling the web of intertwined stories, as showcased through the use of multiperspectivity: storytelling through multiple points of view, shading in every character. In effect, the film becomes a rich and complex tapestry of perspectives. 

Each of the six main characters of the film has their own section showing their response to the tragedy that has occurred. The first section revolves around Justine Gandy. The movie explores the trope of suburban utopia, and each of the characters pokes a different hole in that ideal. Justine is an alcoholic living alone who often gets into trouble for caring too much about her young students. Through phone calls with the principal (Benedict Wong) and his accompanying eye-rolls, viewers learn how Justine has driven students home from school and acted “inappropriately” by hugging one of her crying students, showing how much she cares for these kids. This serves as a really strong motivation for her actions later on in the film, doing things that seem irrational to try and save the last kid left, Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher). Though she seems to care deeply about these children, audiences are still unsure what to make of her connection to the disappearances. Her perspective is akin to classic home-invasion horror: she’s home alone, receives phone calls from unknown callers, and when the doorbell rings, the audience is begging her not to answer it. She seems like the classic “Main Girl” in these scenes, which is complex because though audiences are terrified for Justine, they are still conflicted on whether or not her care for the children led to her going a step further and possibly being the reason they are missing. 

Justine and, later, Archer (Josh Brolin), a father of one of the missing children, both have inexplicable dreams with the same visual of people in terrifying clown makeup. This motif continues to haunt the narrative through a character associated with it. The hair and makeup department did a fantastic job creating a memorable and distinct image, from teeth covered in lipstick and twig eyebrows to bright orange wigs, perfectly coiled, making the witch character so recognizable that she is impossible to forget about even before she enters the plot in a significant way. It is impressive the way they can use classic horror gore and purposeful character design to deepen the overall magnitude of the horrific visuals. 

To offset its intensity, the film offers comic relief in the form of the junkie James (Austin Abrams). James is a ratty and clueless character that, through Abrams’s cheeky line delivery and comedic timing, paired with Cregger’s absurdist writing, makes Weapons as memorable as it is. Lines like “I really don’t like police stations, you know? They kinda just freak me out… I’m phobic” just add so much life to the film and are what make the entire theater erupt into laughter. James is truly the heart of the movie and a main reason why it is such a pleasure to watch. 

As Zach Cregger’s sophomore film, Weapons really is a triumph. Its themes aren’t too blunt or shallow, and the characters have strong motivations behind their actions, like Justine and Archer trying to save the children they care about, or like James trying to make enough money to fuel his addiction. This solves an issue with Barbarian of why characters make decisions like sleeping in an unlocked car, or breaking into a sketchy house (something that happens in Weapons and Barbarian), and leaves viewers far more satisfied. The film also has a very minimalist, percussive score (done by Ryan and Hays Holladay), which is successful in having the audience on the edge of their seat throughout the entire movie. Along with that, there are obvious homages to other classic movies in the horror genre. The “no caller ID” phone calls seem reminiscent of Scream (1996), and there are some obvious visual allusions to The Shining (1980)’s classic “Here’s Johnny” scene. Cregger even brings back Justin Long from Barbarian for a small cameo role, which feels very much like an earnest love for the genre rather than mindless audience pandering. 

Overall, Weapons is a masterclass at storytelling and is really effective as both a comedy and a horror movie. Each character's relationship with addiction in their own respect shows how multifaceted it truly is and how it can ruin the lives of anybody, no matter their background. Though every character is struggling, it is not the only focus of the movie, which helps to further the enjoyability of the film as not just an allegory, but also a complex and entertaining story. The characters are also all so well built by Cregger that audiences feel a deep connection to every one of them by the end of the film. Weapons is so unique from concept to character to comedy, which is what makes it one of the best movies to come out this year.