‘Weapons’ review: Julia Garner and Josh Brolin lead ‘Barbarian’ filmmaker’s inventive new horror

Dir/scr: Zach Cregger. US. 2025. 129mins.

Writer/director Zach Cregger’s second solo feature plays on any parent’s fear — the mysterious disappearance of a child — to craft an intricately plotted, supremely twisty horror thriller. Like the filmmaker’s 2022 feature Barbarian, Weapons takes its time laying out an elaborate story, repeatedly shifting perspectives and main characters until the myriad strands come together in immensely satisfying fashion.

Significantly ratchets up the tension, leading to a gripping final chapter

Opening Weapons on August 8 in the UK and US, Warner Bros has left the picture shrouded in secrecy, a wise move to keep audiences from knowing too much about what will unfold. Josh Brolin and Julia Garner provide commercial firepower, but horror fans may be most interested because of Cregger, whose low-budget Barbarian grossed an impressive $45m worldwide. Without direct competition in the marketplace, Weapons might not be killer at the box office, but theatrical returns should be solid.

A bizarre occurrence has taken place in a small Pennsylvania town: at exactly 2:17am, 17 students from the same third-grade class all walked out of their homes and ran off into the night, never to be seen again. Seeking answers, the shocked parents — led by angry, grieving father Archer (Brolin) — start to scapegoat Justine (Garner), who was the class’s teacher. Overwhelmed by the misdirected rage hurled her way, Justine swears she had nothing to do with the children’s disappearance, insisting she is just as confused and upset as everyone else. 

Determined to get to the bottom of what happened — in part, to clear her name — Justine tries to get in contact with Alex (Cary Christopher), the only student who, inexplicably, did not disappear. But concerned principal Marcus (Benedict Wong) refuses to allow her near the traumatised Alex and forces Justine to take a leave of absence from the school. 

Barbarian boasted a clever structure in which Cregger incorporated three distinct story segments, only gradually revealing the terrifying origins of a seemingly ordinary rental home. His approach is even more ambitious for his follow-up, which tells its tale over six chapters, each devoted to a separate character. Weapons may focus initially on Justine, but the script quickly establishes its narrative cadence, ending each segment with an unnerving cliffhanger before moving on to a new, temporary protagonist.

Discussing Weapons’ additional side characters risks spoiling the surprises in store. But let it be said Cregger adroitly introduces a collection of supplemental figures — including Alden Ehrenreich’s incompetent cop Paul — who intrigue both as individuals and as spokes in the narrative wheel. It is testament to the film’s overall self-assurance that, early on, Cregger eschews major scares, confident that creating an aura of dread will be sufficient to hook horror fans. That said, the writer/director and cinematographer Larkin Seiple do design some haunting shots, especially during a slow-motion sequence of the children running from their homes as if in a trance, with George Harrison’s ‘Beware Of Darkness’ adding a chilling musical accompaniment. But in due time, Weapons significantly ratchets up the tension, leading to a gripping final chapter that delivers sustained terrors.

With such a puzzle-box plot, each chapter providing clues to what happened to the missing children, the danger is that the mystery will prove more scintillating than the payoff. But Cregger does terrific work answering the riddles he has teased throughout the runtime. A rattling score, courtesy of Cregger and his co-composers Ryan Holladay and Hays Holladay, hints at an unseen horror lurking in this tranquil Pennsylvania community, but those grander anxieties are juxtaposed with more commonplace concerns, such as Justine’s growing alcoholism and Paul’s feelings of worthlessness. Weapons gracefully balances its different tensions, all of them cathartically released during the superbly orchestrated, graphically violent final 20 minutes. 

Even though many characters criss-cross into each other’s lives in unexpected ways, the writer/director grounds the proceedings in a realism that ensures no plot point is too convoluted. The performances are similarly lifelike, with Brolin and Garner particularly good portraying everyday people pulled deeper into a fiendish scheme they only fully understand (along with the audience) in the film’s last moments.

And despite Weapons’ ample horrors, the picture is also darkly comic, finding grim humour in the story’s fantastical, playfully absurd extremes. Indeed, some of the funniest scenes intertwine with the most nerve-wracking as the characters come to grips with Cregger’s unimaginable, inventive shocks. Like the residents of this small town, viewers are not prepared for what’s heading their way.