When all but one child from the same classroom mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.
Zach Cregger’s Weapons arrives with an air of expectation, following the success of his earlier horror feature Barbarian. Where that film thrived on shocks and unexpected turns, Weapons takes a different path, opting for a slow, layered build that blends mystery, crime drama, and ultimately supernatural horror. It is a film designed to unsettle its audience, and while it may not satisfy everyone, it achieves a rare quality in contemporary cinema: genuine unpredictability.
The story begins with a deeply disturbing event. In the small American town of North Brenton, seventeen third-grade children vanish from their homes in the middle of the night. The scale of the disappearance is staggering, and the community is immediately plunged into grief, fear, and suspicion. Only one child, Alex, played by Cary Christopher, remains. His survival and the reasons behind it become one of the central mysteries. From this premise, Cregger constructs a narrative divided into chapters, each told from a different perspective. It is not a straightforward crime drama but a fractured account of events that slowly pieces itself together.
The first chapter introduces Josh Brolin’s character, a father whose young son is among the missing. His performance is one of the film’s highlights. Brolin leans into raw obsession, portraying a man consumed by grief, rage, and a desperate need for answers. The camera often lingers on his face, capturing the mix of fury and hopelessness that defines his journey. It is a performance that feels both frightening and sympathetic, embodying the kind of flawed determination that anchors the film in real human emotion.
The second major perspective is that of Julia Garner as Justine, a teacher caught in the aftermath of the tragedy. Garner delivers a strikingly layered performance. She is burdened with guilt, attacked by her community, and haunted by her own inability to protect her students. Her arc explores how quickly suspicion can turn towards those in positions of responsibility, even when they themselves are victims. Through Justine, the film touches on themes of blame, collective trauma, and the fragility of trust.
Cary Christopher deserves equal recognition. As Alex, the one boy left behind, he captures a haunting mixture of innocence and burden. He is too young to fully understand the magnitude of what has happened, yet he carries the weight of being the lone survivor. His interactions with both Brolin’s father and Garner’s teacher add layers of complexity, reminding viewers that children in stories like these are not just symbols of innocence lost but characters in their own right, forced to navigate overwhelming trauma.
Cregger’s choice to structure the film as a series of shifting perspectives pays dividends. Each chapter withholds certain information, forcing the audience to stay alert and piece together the narrative themselves. Unlike many thrillers that tip their hand too early, Weapons remains elusive. It offers fragments and glimpses, but never enough to predict the full outcome, until the film is ready for it's bid reveal. This structure keeps tension alive across the film’s runtime and prevents the early sections from becoming stagnant.
Visually, Weapons is atmospheric. The cinematography leans into a subdued, gritty aesthetic that feels reminiscent of Stephen King’s worlds: small towns with dark secrets, shadowed interiors, and a creeping sense that something unnatural lurks just beneath the surface. There are moments of startling imagery: glimpses of twisted clown-like makeup, unsettling door camera footage, and lingering shots of quiet suburban streets that feel anything but safe. The result is a world that appears ordinary on the surface but hums with menace underneath.
The film’s sound design enhances this dread. Silence is used with precision, broken by sudden noises that jolt both characters and viewers. The score avoids excess, instead drawing out unease with sparse instrumentation and drawn-out tones. Together with the visuals, the audio design helps create a mood that is tense without being overwhelming, a slow tightening of the screws rather than an immediate assault.
Where the film becomes divisive is in its final act. After carefully sustaining the atmosphere of crime mystery and psychological drama, Weapons pivots into supernatural horror, revealing the true forces behind the disappearances. For some viewers this is the bold payoff that the story has been carefully building toward, expanding the narrative from local tragedy into cosmic terror. For others, it feels like a departure, trading in subtle unease for familiar horror tropes.
Personally, the final chapter feels both invigorating and frustrating. On one hand, it provides an escalation that is undeniably dramatic, turning quiet dread into outright nightmare, with a karmic resolution. On the other, it leaves many questions unresolved. The mystery that carried so much weight throughout the film is not fully explained, and viewers who crave concrete answers may find themselves unsatisfied. The sense of dread remains, but the intellectual closure is lacking.
This issue ties into the broader experience of Weapons. It is a film that thrives on tension, uncertainty, and dread, but it does not deliver clarity or abundant action. If you enter hoping for a horror film packed with set-piece scares, you may feel underwhelmed. If you hope for a neatly tied mystery, you may find the lack of depth in its answers frustrating. Yet the very refusal to conform to expectations is also what makes the film stand out.
What lingers most after watching is not a particular jump scare or a shocking twist, but the atmosphere of grief and paranoia. Cregger explores how a community collapses in the face of unexplainable tragedy, how suspicion corrodes relationships, and how desperation drives people to extremes. These human elements remain grounded even when the story turns supernatural. That balance, between the ordinary pain of loss and the extraordinary terror of otherworldly forces, gives the film its unique character.
The performances elevate the material. Brolin, Garner, and Christopher are all outstanding, and the supporting cast contribute convincingly to the portrait of a fractured town. Even when the story risks slipping into the unbelievable, the actors keep it tethered to real emotion.
Weapons is a film that deserves recognition for its ambition and its ability to sustain suspense. It is refreshing to see a horror-mystery that withholds rather than overexplains, that chooses mood over spectacle, and that challenges viewers to stay engaged. While the lack of resolution and limited action may frustrate, the strengths outweigh the flaws. It is a film that lingers, unsettling in ways that straightforward horror rarely achieves.
Cregger may not have delivered a perfect film, but he has crafted one that is bold, unnerving, and memorable. Weapons is less about the answers than the experience of asking questions in the dark. For viewers willing to embrace uncertainty, it offers a chilling and rewarding journey.
Weapons was released in NZ cinemas on August 7, 2025
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