Weapons (2025)
Horror · Mystery · Supernatural Thriller
| Director | Zach Cregger |
| Cast | Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong |
| Screenplay | Zach Cregger |
| Music | Ryan Holladay, Hays Holladay |
| Cinematography | Larkin Seiple |
Look, I’ll be upfront. I went into Weapons half-expecting to be disappointed. Barbarian was lightning in a bottle — one of those horror films that comes out of nowhere and genuinely messes with your head. Directors who do that once rarely do it twice. That’s just how it goes.
Zach Cregger proved me wrong. Badly.
Weapons is not just good. It’s the kind of film you finish and then just sit there for a minute, not ready to go back to normal life yet. That doesn’t happen often. When it does, you pay attention.
The Premise — Which Is Genuinely One of the Best I’ve Heard in Years
2:17 in the morning. A small town in Pennsylvania called Maybrook.
Seventeen kids — all from the same third-grade classroom — walk out of their homes at the exact same time. No warning. No note. Nothing. They just get up, walk out the door, and disappear into the dark.
One child stays behind. Just one. Out of eighteen kids in that class, one doesn’t move. And nobody — not the police, not the parents, not anyone — can explain why that one child was different from the others.
That’s it. That’s the setup. And honestly? Just typing it out gives me the same uncomfortable feeling I had sitting in the theater. Because there’s something about that image — seventeen children walking into the dark at 2:17 AM — that just won’t leave you alone.
The Story Follows Three People. All of Them Are Hiding Something.
Justine Gandy is the teacher. Julia Garner plays her, and she’s the emotional center of the whole film. The morning after the disappearances, Justine goes from grieving teacher to main suspect almost overnight. The town needs someone to blame. She’s right there. She must have known. She should have protected them. The accusations come fast and they don’t stop.
What makes Justine interesting — and what makes Garner’s performance so good — is that she’s not a straightforward innocent victim. She’s dealing with her own stuff. An affair, a drinking problem, a life that was already coming apart at the seams before seventeen children vanished on her watch. She’s complicated. Real. The kind of character you root for even when you’re not entirely sure you should.
Then there’s Archer Graff. Josh Brolin. I’m not going to say much about him because figuring out who Archer really is and what he knows is one of the film’s genuine pleasures. What I will say is — Brolin is doing something really quiet and really effective here. No big speeches. No dramatic moments. Just this low, heavy presence that makes every scene he’s in feel slightly dangerous.
Alden Ehrenreich plays Paul, a young man whose connection to Maybrook’s history slowly comes into focus across the film. His is probably the most emotionally raw of the three storylines, and Ehrenreich handles it well. Benedict Wong is great in a smaller role. Amy Madigan as an older local woman who clearly knows far more than she lets on — she’s in maybe four scenes and she’s the one I thought about most afterward.
Here’s the Thing About How Cregger Directs Horror
He doesn’t scare you with what happens. He scares you with the feeling that something is about to happen, and then he keeps that feeling going for way longer than feels comfortable.
Maybrook looks completely normal. Small town America. Nothing obviously wrong with it. But from the first frame, something feels off. The camera lingers on things a beat too long. Background details that don’t quite add up. A quality to the light — shot beautifully by Larkin Seiple, same cinematographer as Barbarian — that makes even daytime feel slightly wrong.
By the time anything explicitly scary happens, your nervous system is already worn down. You’ve been tense for an hour without fully realising it. That’s skilled filmmaking. That’s the difference between a director who understands horror and one who just knows how to make you flinch.
The Score. I Have to Talk About the Score.
Ryan and Hays Holladay composed the music, with Cregger himself contributing. And honestly — I noticed I was gripping my armrest during a scene that wasn’t even particularly scary on screen, and I realised it was entirely because of what the score was doing underneath it.
It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t do the horror movie thing of getting louder when something bad is coming. It just sits there underneath everything, slowly making you feel worse and worse without giving you anything specific to point at. That’s incredibly hard to pull off. They pull it off.
Is It Actually Scary Though?
Depends what you mean by scary.
Jump scares? A few, placed well, genuinely effective because of how much groundwork has been laid before them. But that’s not the main event here.
The main event is dread. The feeling that something enormous and dark is sitting just outside the frame of every scene, and that when it finally steps into view, it’s going to be worse than anything you imagined. Weapons earns that feeling and then delivers on it in a final act that is — I’m not going to oversell it — one of the most disturbing things I’ve watched in a cinema in the last five years.
What Didn’t Work Perfectly
Okay, two things.
First — the middle section drags. Not badly, but noticeably. The film is 128 minutes and there are maybe twenty minutes in the second act where the multiple storyline structure loses its grip slightly. It picks back up, but you feel it.
Second — the ending is ambiguous. Deliberately so. Cregger doesn’t explain everything, and some things are left open in ways that will genuinely frustrate certain viewers. I thought it was the right call. The person I saw it with did not agree. Both reactions are completely reasonable.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Julia Garner — seriously, one of the best film performances of the year
- Josh Brolin doing career-best quiet work
- The dread is real, sustained, and the good kind that stays with you
- Larkin Seiple’s cinematography makes Maybrook feel alive in all the wrong ways
- Score and sound design are genuinely exceptional
- Premise is completely original — you haven’t seen this before
Cons:
- Middle section loses pace for about twenty minutes
- Long runtime — 128 minutes asks for patience
- Ambiguous ending — not for everyone
- Not a jumpscare film — wrong pick if that’s what you need tonight
Final Verdict
Watch it. That’s really all I have to say.
Weapons is the film that proves Barbarian wasn’t a fluke. Zach Cregger knows exactly what he’s doing, Julia Garner is extraordinary, and the whole thing is constructed with a level of craft and patience that mainstream horror almost never gets. It made $270 million at the box office because people watched it and immediately told everyone they knew.
Turn the lights off. Sit with it. Let it do its thing.
You won’t forget it.
Our Rating: 4 / 5 ⭐
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is Weapons (2025) about?
Seventeen children from the same classroom vanish from their homes at exactly 2:17 AM on the same night in a small Pennsylvania town. Their teacher becomes the main suspect. The film follows her and two other characters as the truth about what happened slowly comes apart.
Who directed Weapons (2025)?
Zach Cregger — same director as Barbarian (2022). Weapons was written, directed and co-scored by him. Warner Bros. distributed it.
Is Weapons a sequel to Barbarian?
No. Completely separate story, different characters, different town. But if Barbarian was your thing, you’ll feel right at home here.
Is Weapons suitable for all ages?
No — rated R, recommended 17 and above. Intense horror, disturbing imagery and violence throughout.
How much did Weapons (2025) make at the box office?
Around $270 million worldwide on a $38 million budget. One of the biggest horror hits of 2025.
How long is Weapons (2025)?
2 hours and 8 minutes.
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