Zach Cregger found his niche with Barbarians and double-whammies with Weapons, a horror movie so intensely focused on character that the horror could easily be removed and it would still work.
Here they are, all these small townsfolk, warts and all, peccadilloes to spare. Julia Garner as Justine, the teacher of young kids who drinks way too much and likes having boozy sex with Paul, a guy she shouldn’t have sex with. Josh Brolin as Archer, an angry parent convinced that Justine is behind the peculiar disappearance of an entire classful – bar one – of kids, determined to expose her for what he thinks she is. Alden Ehrenreich as Paul, the recovering alcoholic tempted off the wagon now and again by Justine. Benedict Wong as Marcus, Justine’s boss at school, a largely ineffectual man full of management-speak and platitudes not really supporting his staff member in her hour of need. Austin Abrams as James, a drug user, petty thief and smalltown bullshitter who perhaps ties all these others together. And finally Cary Christopher as Alex, the only kid in Justine’s class who didn’t run away in the middle of the night never to be seen again.
Cregger paints them all well, and other side characters – like Donna (June Diane Raphael), furious with partner Paul for being so easily tempted by the body and the bottle offered by Justine – incidentally delivering an almost Lynchian portrait of a suburban America so average it’s almost freakish.
His actors, the leads in particular, keep motivations under wraps with guarded performances deliberately not giving anything away. What does Justine know? Is Archer angry for some undisclosed reason. Why is Paul so easily tempted by Justine, and so on.
Cregger stays resolutely on these key figures, with most getting their own chapter – Justine. Archer. Paul. James. Marcus. Alex. At a certain point, with all these characters and their foibles whirling around each other, and a real sense of smalltown paranoia being conjured, I started wondering if he’d forgotten about the 17 missing children.
And then the missing-in-action bit of the story swings back into play in no uncertain terms, when Amy Madigan’s Gladys enters the frame – complete in red fright wig and overpainted lips.
Weapons is like a deconstructed meal. All the familiar bits are here but they’re in an unfamiliar order, served up by a director who insists on re-ordering the same ingredients again and again in each separate chapter. Every time a slightly different approach and different information gleaned.
To say what sort of horror Cregger’s offering is a bit of a spoiler, because that’s part of the game he’s playing with his audience. Have the children been abducted by some paedophile ring, perhaps? In footage from the doorbell cameras everyone in town has we can see that the kids run away with their arms outstretched – a pose borrowed from that famous “Napalm Girl” picture from the Vietnam War – so there’s something funny going on there and it probably isn’t paedophilia.
What though? Eventually Cregger stops toying with us and reveals what is going on while at the same time rushing us into a spooky and over-the-top finale of chickens coming home to roost, just deserts being served and terrible damage being done with a potato peeler.
It’s definitely a contender for best horror film of 2025, though Bring Her Back might have words to say about that, with everyone from Stephen King to Sight & Sound magazine lining up to sing Cregger’s movie’s praises. As I write Cregger is working on his next movie, Resident Evil. What genre would that be, I wonder.
Weapons – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
