Weapons

Title: Weapons
Director: Zach Cregger
Released: 2025
Starring: Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Benedict Wong, Austin Abrams, Amy Madigan, Toby Huss, Clayton Farris

Plot: When all the children in her class bar one mysteriously vanish without a trace, third grade teacher Justine Gandy finds herself being accused by the town while Archer Graff the father of one of the boys begins his own investigation. 

Review: Following up his breakout shocker Barbarian which somehow has managed to maintain its mystique and a film I certainly felt rewarded its audience for going in blind which was certainly how I also approached this follow up which thankfully doesn’t see him attempting to recreate the shocks of Barbarian and instead aiming for something more ambitious as he crafts what could almost be seen as a small town X-Files style mystery while putting his faith in the audience to have the patience to let allow him to slowly reveal the mystery at play. 

Shot with a nonlinear narrative as Cregger breaks the film into character focused chapters as it switches between different members of the town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania with Julia Garner playing the third grade teacher whose class disappeared in the middle of the night leaving her to be branded a witch by the parents looking for a target for their rage. Josh Brolin meanwhile handles the brunt of the detective work as the father whose son is amongst the vanished children while elsewhere Alden Ehrenreich Police officer and Austin Abrams junkie and petty theft provide the local colour in a surprisingly humorous aside to the main story which made me think of John C. Reilly’s plot line in Magnolia.

Cregger of course is no stranger to blending horrific shocks with natural comedy as so memorably seen in Barbarian when Justin Long (who also puts in a quick appearance here too)  is questioning if mysterious subterranean tunnels add to the coverage of his house and certainly this is once more the case here as amongst the shocks I found myself genuinely cracking up at certain points of the film while the small town drama had me hooked as the growing mystery behind the missing kids. 

Were the film truly succeeds especially in the first half while we still being introduced to the main players of the story and prior to the reveal of the truth behind the mystery is how he manages to frequently buck the expectations we have about characters as he introduces them through their perspective and then twists our opinion by showing them through someone else’s eyes such Brolin’s Archer who initially is shown as a quick to anger ringleader of the angry parents placing their blame on Justine only to then pull a 180 by showing him as a desperate parent playing detective as he hunts for any shred of information which will lead him to finding his son.

Once the villain of the piece is revealed (which no doubt social media will have already handled for you) it does feel like the film loses a step but then it was always going to be hard to give the audience something that surprises them like like Barbarian did while at the same time Glady’s look doesn’t feel too far removed from Nicholas Cage’s look in Longlegs with a set of magical skills that made me instantly think of the X Files episode Theef even if her Hexcraft never gets a creative as putting a voodoo doll in a microwave to kill one of her victims. There is blood of course and Cregger certainly does get creative with the bursts of gore he drops throughout the film as characters succumb to their more primal sides when under Glady’s control. 

Building on what he established with Barbarian here Cregger continues to evolve as director as he delivers a memorable mystery which was easily one of my favourite cinema outings of the year that even a busted AC couldn’t take away from.