Director Zach Cregger’s sophomore film revisits some unlikely inspiration in delivering one of the most unique horror films this summer.
2022’s Barbarian was a crazy film that cemented Zach Cregger as a voice to watch in horror. A unique film that mixed a crazy mutant that lived as baby living underground in an AirBnb owned by a cancelled celebrity. Cregger, a founding member of The Whitest Kids You Know comedy troupe, much like Jordan Peele, manages to blend comedic concepts and twist them into deft horror films. In Weapons, we have a concept about a group of children who’ve gone missing from one classroom and the impact that disappearance has on the community. The film’s unusual out of time chapter structure hearkens back to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Weapons, while seeming completely bespoke to a younger audience has echoes of influences as diverse as The Witches, The Serpent and The Rainbow and even Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Cregger’s film follows several characters, a school teacher, a parent whose gone missing, an adulterous police officer, a drug addict, a school principal and the one child who didn’t go missing to slowly piece together a narrative that seems to come out of left field. Several actors shine in this ensemble, including Benedict Wong as the school principal Marcus, Alden Ehrenreich as the crooked cop also has a crazy role – but this is largely a film that hangs on Julia Garner’s role as Justine, the teacher of the students who’ve gone missing and Josh Brolin as Archer, the father of one of the missing boys. I’m deliberately being vague in this review and that’s a purposeful act as largely the less you know going into this film, the more effective it will be.
That being said, the film does feel like a short film stretched out to feature length. The chapter with the drug dealer James largely feels like filler and it adds very little to the plot overall. But the person to watch in this movie is actress Amy Madigan in a role as one of the boy’s aunts named Gladys. Madigan is unrecognizable in this role and it will likely be one of the iconic horror characters to spawn from the film. Check out Weapons in theaters this weekend and go in as cold as possible.
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WEAPONS (2025)
★★★★ of ★★★★★ stars
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OUT OF THEATER REVIEW