Ever since the first eerie marketing for Zach Cregger’s sophomore feature, Weapons, started going viral online, it instantly shot to the top of my most-anticipated list for the year. I wasn’t quite as high on Barbarian as everyone else, but I could see Cregger’s potential. Fast forward three years and a $30+ million bidding war that ended with Jordan Peele firing his entire managerial team, Weapons has finally arrived. All I can say is: no wonder Peele was furious about losing the rights. This thing is a modern horror masterpiece.
One night at 2:17 A.M. in Maybrook, Pennsylvania, every child from Mrs. Gandy’s class, woke up, got out of bed, went downstairs, opened the front door, walked into the dark and they never came back. Thus launching a police investigation that traumatizes the entire town, turning neighbor against neighbor. With the town struggling to cope, several individuals launch their own investigation to find where their children ran off to.
The brilliance of Weapons lies in its non-linear narrative structure. It plays out like assembling a puzzle, where each piece is a character, and each character’s perspective offers only fleeting glimpses of the bigger picture. In this case, that picture is the disappearance of seventeen children. We follow Justine Gandy (Julia Garner, a pitch-perfect scream queen), a teacher of the missing students who’s harassed by the town, convinced she’s somehow involved. Then there’s Archer Graff (Josh Brolin, equal parts tragic and intimidating), the father of one of the missing kids, certain the police aren’t doing their jobs. Their storylines unravel like a slow-burn detective thriller, each step pulling us deeper into the mystery. The pacing is tight, the tone charged with tension, and there’s always something dark and dangerous lurking just beneath the surface.
Then we follow Paul Morgan (Alden Ehrenreich), a local police officer having an exceptionally bad day, and James (Austin Abrams, hysterical), a homeless drug addict and burglar on the hunt for a good steal. Their storyline unfolds like a dark comedy, playful, twisted, and just a little mean-spirited. Finally, there’s Andrew Marcus (Benedict Wong), the school’s principal, trying to move on, and Alex (Cary Christopher, delivering a fantastic child performance), the one student from Mrs. Gandy’s class who didn’t vanish, though there’s far more to him than meets the eye. These narratives begin as a hazy suburban daydream before curdling into a full-blown nightmare about the rot beneath America’s picket fences.
Not only does each narrative offer a unique lens through which to view this puzzle, but each comes with its own distinct tone and cinematic style, as if Cregger is determined to push himself to the very edge of his filmmaking abilities. One moment he’s orchestrating quiet, dread-filled suspense; the next, he’s leaning into razor-sharp comedy or gut-punch tragedy. Yet it all feels part of the same feverish vision. No matter the genre, tone, or setup, my audience was locked in for every single second. There’s one scene in particular that perfectly captures Cregger’s control over his craft: it starts with nervous, almost embarrassed laughter rippling through the crowd, then, without warning, the air is sucked out of the room, dead silence, a collective gasp of horror, and finally, a chorus of genuine, panicked screams. All of it in under thirty seconds. That’s not just good filmmaking; that’s mastery. With Weapons, Cregger has built a full-blown cinematic rollercoaster, tight, terrifying, hysterical, and completely batshit insane. And beneath all the chaos, he’s tackling the horror of school shootings through a chilling, modern reimagining of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. It’s bold, it’s unsettling, and undeniably entertaining.
Overall, Weapons cements itself as a modern horror masterpiece. It is not just one of the best horror films of the year, but one of the best films of the year, period. Zach Cregger has sharpened his directorial vision and expanded it into something bolder, stranger, and more ambitious than ever before. Weapons is a full-throttle cinematic rollercoaster, a haunting and hypnotic blend of horror epic and Paul Thomas Anderson–level character drama, and it confirms Cregger as one of the most exciting filmmakers working today.
My Rating: A
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