Weapons (2025) – Review

Quick Thoughts:

1. Zach Cregger is the best. His follow-up to Barbarian (2022) is an ambitious crowd-pleaser.
2. Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Cary Christopher, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Benedict Wong,  and Amy Madigan understood the assignment and delivered fun performances
3. Cinematographer Larkin Seiple (Swiss Army Man, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Beef) will hopefully be remembered come awards time. 
4. Cregger loves a creepy house.
5. Don’t watch any trailers, stay away from spoilers and go into the movie with zero idea of what’s going to happen (after reading this spoiler-free review). 
6. Don’t be annoyed if it doesn’t surprise you as much as Barbarian. Barbarian came out of nowhere and had the luxury of not having much hype or anticipation.

Weapons is great because it’s ambitious, fun, and proves that writer/director Zach Cregger can go big. Much like Jordan Peele, Julia Ducournau, Coralie Fargeat, Parker Finn, Ari Aster, Robert Eggers and the Philippou brothers, Cregger used the success of his first horror film to craft a technically ambitious follow-up that doesn’t disappoint. It’s fun watching Cregger become more confident behind the camera while still understanding what made Barbarian (2022) so great (it’s an audacious and unpredictable experience).

Weapons revolves around the sudden disappearance of 17 elementary school kids and the effect it has on a small community. There are no clues, witnesses or a clear motive, so the cops and local authorities come to a standstill. The only facts they know are that the children were in the same class taught by a new teacher, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), and 17 of the 18 kids woke up at 2:17 a.m. on the same morning and ran out of their houses towards an unknown location. Spoiling anything more wouldn’t be cool, just know that the film skips around between a teacher Justine), a bereaved father (Josh Brolin), a local cop (Alden Ehrenreich), a junkie (Austin Abrams) and a school principal (Benedict Wong) who all are dealing with the aftermath of the mysterious tragedy differently (or not at all). Like Barbarian, the film is broken up into multiple chapters, and a lot of credit needs to go to editor Joe Murphy (Barbarian, Swallow) for successfully tying together multiple storylines into a coherent and enjoyable manner.

What I like most about Weapons is how the characters are given time to become interesting people. After Julia Garner was wasted in Wolf Man (2025), it’s fun watching her play a complex character who loves her students but can’t stop crossing boundaries. She spends most of the film being shot in profile, and she has excellent chemistry with Ehrenreich, Brolin and Wong. The central actors must’ve been a fan of Barbarian, because you can tell that they enjoy being in this film and relish their opportunity to be serious, silly and scared stupid

The story behind Weapons is interesting because of how quickly it came together (and was hit by multiple roadblocks). Cregger needed years to fine-tune the Barbarian screenplay (while looking for funding), but Weapons poured out of him after the sudden death of one of his closest friends. After the tragedy, Cregger parked himself in his garage/laundry room (where he also wrote Barbarian) and started writing his “epic” script. Drawing inspiration from the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed Magnolia (1999), Weapons is an ensemble piece that’s simultaneously funny and melancholic. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he uses the word “bigger” three times in one paragraph, and he isn’t wrong. The good news is that the bigger plot doesn’t create an unwieldy mess. The film is easy to follow and there are several very funny moments that blend well with the melancholic story. Like Barbarian, there are moments in Weapons that made the audience erupt in laughter, which is impressive for a film about the disappearance of children.

The cinematography from Larkin Seiple (Swiss Army Man, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Beef) is fantastic, and I love the way he shoots the characters in profile and his wide shots are a thing of beauty. When awards season rolls around, I hope people remember his work because it’s perfect. 

Between Barbarian and Weapons, Cregger has found a way to combine comedy with terror in a way that doesn’t grind the film to a stop. This partly comes from his experience with The Whitest Kids You Know sketch comedy troupe, but comedy sketches and 128-minute films are a different beast. There are violent moments in Weapons that are genuinely hilarious (it features the best person being thrown around moments of 2025), and the punchlines never halt the narrative. It’s also interesting how Cregger creates vast amounts of tension and then drops a joke to relieve the tension. This may annoy people looking for a 128-minute tension bomb, but his brand of “tense and release” works for me. 

Final thoughts – Watch it in theaters.