Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (October 16, 2025)
Zach Cregger started out as a comedic actor and created his cinematic directorial debut with 2009’s smutty flop farce Miss March. After Jordan Peele made the leap from sketch comedy to scary flicks via 2017’s hit Get Out, apparently this inspired Cregger to follow suit.
This occurred via 2022’s low-budget Barbarian. While not a box office smash, its $45 million worldwide take equaled about 10 times its budget and a strong cult following ensured Cregger would stick with horror for his next flick, 2025’s Weapons.
At 2:17 AM one day, 17 of 18 kids in Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) third grade class mysteriously flee their homes all at the same time and vanish. Unsurprisingly, this sets off massive consternation among the community, as parents led by Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) accuse Justine of culpability.
Justine feels Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher) – her only pupil who didn’t disappear – acts as a key to solve the mystery. This sends her down a rabbit hole, one that eventually makes her an unlikely ally with Archer as they try to find the absent kids.
Because Barbarian never received a physical media release, I obviously didn’t review it. However, I did see it theatrically and I thought it was… okay.
Actually, I experienced disappointment when I watched it back in 2022, as I felt it turned into an inconsistent experience. While aspects of the movie worked, the whole thing didn’t quite gel.
This made me somewhat skeptical of Weapons. Sure, it got great reviews, but so did Barbarian and it failed to work for me.
In the case of Weapons, the critics got it right. Cregger fully achieves his goals in this consistently inventive and insidious little creepshow.
Cregger launches Weapons with a punch, as the opening depiction of the kids as they run away from their homes becomes an intensely effective match of music and visuals. Cregger pairs the students’ movements with George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness” in a manner so haunting and evocative that I worried Weapons would go downhill from there.
Happily, the rest of the movie keeps pace, as Cregger forms an involving tale. Expect a non-linear approach with more than a hint of Rashomon along the way.
The first section of Weapons comes from Justine’s POV before we shift to Archer’s viewpoint. We get a few more perspectives after that, though I won’t reveal more because I don’t want to spoil the fun.
As semi-trite as the Rashomon “same events from different eyes” technique can be, Cregger doesn’t force it down our throats. He uses it in a fairly subtle manner, one that also credits the viewer’s intelligence.
This means that Cregger lets the audience connect various dots. For instance, at one point someone paints a nasty message on Justine’s car.
Rather than clearly tell us who did this, Cregger uses his “alternate POV” method to allow us to figure it out on our own. Weapons keeps these little tidbits subtle and that makes them fare better.
Much of Weapons becomes tough to discuss thanks to my perpetual avoidance of spoilers. This also applies to arguably the movie’s strongest element: a character who turns into a substantial part of the tale until 74 minutes into the 129-minute film.
We find Alex’s Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan) at that point. Initially the movie depicts her as a doddering and comical oddball, but this changes as the narrative progresses.
I kind of hate to even mention Aunt Gladys because she appears so far into the narrative and she becomes such an important presence. Still, I feel I need to talk about her if just because of the work Madigan does.
Unfairly, I sometimes find it tough to detach an actor from one particular role that I couldn’t stand. Call this “Catherine Hicks Syndrome”, as whenever I see her, I flash back to how much I loathed her Gillian in 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
With Madigan, I persistently connect her to her annoying part in 1989’s Field of Dreams. No matter how many other times I see her, that role sticks in my craw and makes it tough for me accept her in an objective sense.
36 years after Field of Dreams rubbed me the wrong way, I finally find a Madigan part that erases that negativity. As Gladys, she completely knocks it out of the park.
Initially, Gladys just seems like a comical weirdo, but Madigan exposes other tones to the role and handles them with aplomb. The aunt shifts without any grandstanding and Madigan's ability to make these changes means the character becomes all the more effective.
Madigan also shows absolutely no ego in the way she allows the movie to make her look awful. Because the Academy rarely rewards genre actors, I doubt it’ll happen, but Madigan fully deserves Oscar attention for this stunning performance.
And Cregger merits applause and praise for this creative and unsettling horror tale. While his prior genre tale didn’t work for me, Weapons makes me eager to see what Cregger does next.
