Weapons (2025) Review: Zach Cregger Strikes Box Office Gold After ‘Barbarian’ Success

In his 2022 solo debut, Barbarian, Weapons director Zach Cregger stunned audiences with his brilliantly unconventional plotting, agile blend of humor and terror, and thought-provoking thematic undertones that were as nuanced as they were seamlessly interwoven into his storytelling. The posters for his new sophomore film promise a story just as spine-chilling and with equally rich thematic potential. Can he once again deliver the goods and more with this much-anticipated tale of missing schoolchildren in a small town?

Uncanny Plotting, Unrelenting Suspense, Levity-free Laughs

In the fictional town of Maybrook, Illinois, at the precise time of 2:17 A.M., seventeen children from the same school classroom abruptly run out of their houses, vanishing into the night. This sinister event is merely the inciting incident of Weapons, which proceeds from its deceptively simple premise to build a wild tale that only grows more bloodcurdling as it unfolds. Cregger takes the ingeniously jarring perspective shifts of Barbarian to an entirely new level: he has written Weapons as a nonlinear narrative in which each character receives their own chapter, so that their distinct experiences constitute plot progression.

It’s an approach that’s ideal for the film’s central mystery, which is gradually unspooled in a way that’s more than coy enough to keep you riveted. Each chapter takes its sweet time developing its storyline, then ends in a cliffhanger so shocking and tantalizing that you’ll forget how long it took to get there. Only a couple of gratuitous dream sequences count against the 128-minute runtime.

Cregger once again showcases his adroitness with dark humor. The laughs in Weapons never break the tension; indeed, they spring from a mordant appreciation of the horror onscreen, and from the wryly cynical side of its character development. The intersecting adventures of a volatile cop (Alden Ehrenreich) and a delinquent (Austin Abrams) whose addiction has stolen his principles provide some of the movie’s best comedic moments and one of its most chilling revelations.

A Fresh Spin on a Familiar Theme

The theme of children endangered by the evil brewing beneath the veneer of a small town is decidedly tried-and-true for the horror genre, but the characterizations in Weapons sidestep its potential for Stephen King-esque cliché. There are more than enough reprehensible townsfolk here, but denial is not among their sins. It’s refreshing to see a small-town horror film in which the more banal side of the horror lies in how human beings respond to evil, and not how they ignore it. The implausibilities this creates in light of the ultimate reveal might have ruined a lesser story, but like all the best thrillers, Weapons is simply far too compelling to be held down by its lapses in logic.

A Conclusion That’s Slightly Unsatisfying – in the Best Way

If the first two acts of the movie are suffused with dreadful suspense, the third act contains more abject horror and heart-in-mouth action than the rest of the film combined. After a very crowd-pleasing resolution, the suddenness of the ending is as shocking as anything that’s come before, and it’s not nearly so determined to make audiences cheer. It’s a clever emotional compromise – neither grim nor very uplifting – and it’s the perfect miniature epilogue for a tale of such powerful evil. Such evil can be wiped out, but can the same be said of its stain?

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