(L to R) Julia Garner as Justine and Josh Brolin as Archer in New Line Cinema’s ‘Weapons,’ a Warner Bros. Photos launch. Photograph Credit score: Quantrell Colbert. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Leisure Inc. All Rights Reserved.
‘Weapons’ receives 8.5 out of 10 stars.
Opening in theaters August 8 is ‘Weapons,’ written and directed by Zach Cregger and starring Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Benedict Wong, Cary Christopher, and Amy Madigan.
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Preliminary Ideas
Julia Garner as Justine in New Line Cinema’s ‘Weapons,’ a Warner Bros. Photos launch. Photograph Credit score: Photograph Courtesy Warner Bros. Photos. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Leisure Inc. All Rights Reserved.
We’ll admit we weren’t main followers of writer-director Zach Cregger’s function debut, ‘Barbarian.’ Whereas we appreciated its opening act and the movie’s general unpredictability, we have been left dissatisfied by some uneven appearing and a way that it was two tales stapled collectively. Cregger’s second function, ‘Weapons,’ is an entire completely different state of affairs. As soon as once more Cregger experiments with narrative construction and tonal shifts, and whereas he sometimes loses his stability, he brings his numerous plot strands and character arcs collectively in a way more cohesive style whereas sustaining a greater mixture of dread and macabre humor.
This makes ‘Weapons’ top-of-the-line horror outings of 2025 to this point – not too shabby in a 12 months that’s already seen the discharge of wonderful style fare like ‘Sinners’ and ‘Collectively.’ ‘Weapons’ might not have as a lot of the social commentary of these movies, however it’s a daunting, gripping story that also – within the custom of authors like Stephen King – has one thing to say about small city paranoia and the mistreatment of youngsters.
Story and Course
(L to R) Josh Brolin and Author/Director Zach Cregger on the set of New Line Cinema’s ‘Weapons,’ a Warner Bros. Photos launch. Photograph Credit score: Quantrell Colbert. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Leisure Inc. All Rights Reserved.
In case you’ve seen any of the trailers for ‘Weapons,’ you realize the premise: one evening at precisely 2:17 a.m., 17 youngsters from a third-grade class within the city of Maybrook all get up of their properties and run off into the evening, by no means to be seen once more. A month later, regulation enforcement, college officers, and fogeys – led by the grief-stricken Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) — haven’t any clues about what occurred; just one youngster from the category, Alex (Cary Christopher), stays, whereas the city’s suspicions fall primarily on the category trainer, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner).
All that primarily occurs within the first 10 minutes of the film, with a few of it narrated by a baby who hints on the weird nature of the occasions to observe. And weird they’re: ‘Weapons’ is the form of film that it’s higher to see with as little foreknowledge as doable about what’s to come back, and the movie takes off in some surprising instructions from its preliminary setup earlier than coming full circle.
Cregger relates this via a collection of interlocking tales for every of his major characters – together with Justine, Archer, a city cop and former lover of Justine’s named Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), an area homeless junkie named James (Austin Abrams), college principal Marcus (Benedict Wong), and Alex himself. Each story overlaps to a point with the others, though informed from the perspective of no matter character it’s centered on, and so they all dovetail within the movie’s third act. Whereas this creates a little bit of a repetitive rhythm because the film goes on, every character’s story varies sufficient from the others and divulges a bit extra every time of the thriller on the film’s middle, holding one transfixed because the horrific image turns into clearer.
(L to R) Author/Director Zach Cregger and Julia Garner on the set of New Line Cinema’s ‘Weapons,’ a Warner Bros. Photos launch. Photograph Credit score: Quantrell Colbert. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Leisure Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Cregger handles this looping construction extraordinarily effectively for probably the most half, whereas additionally balancing a properly increasing sense of dread and terror with moments of really morbid humor that spring organically from the more and more ghoulish conditions he concocts. That tightrope act goes a bit of off the rails within the third act, because the violence escalates quickly and a number of the finale veers a contact too far into unintentionally comedic terrain – however not sufficient to dilute what’s come earlier than. There are additionally just a few plot holes alongside the way in which if one appears arduous sufficient – however once more, not sufficient to cease this from being an absorbing, scary journey.
Among the movie’s key sequences present genuinely terrifying payoffs to the ambiance that Cregger patiently builds in slow-burn style, aided by Larkin Seiple’s moody cinematography and a very good, wide-ranging rating by Ryan and Hays Holladay in addition to Cregger himself. For many of its 128 minutes, ‘Weapons’ is a tightly-woven tapestry of horror that doesn’t over-explain itself and retains a singular filmmaking imaginative and prescient.
Solid and Performances
Julia Garner as Justine in New Line Cinema’s ‘Weapons,’ a Warner Bros. Photos launch. Photograph Credit score: Photograph Courtesy Warner Bros. Photos. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Leisure Inc. All Rights Reserved.
‘Weapons’ is the definition of an ensemble piece, with wonderful performances from all concerned. Julia Garner appears rather more assured and well-cast right here than she was in her earlier horror outing, ‘Wolf Man,’ as Justine, the trainer with simply sufficient of a murky previous that her clear love for her college students is used as a – dare we are saying – weapon towards her. Josh Brolin can be reliably excellent as Archer, the actor utilizing the innate pressure between his gruff, robust man façade and empathetic inside to create a basically first rate human being who’s pushed to his restrict by the lack of his son.
The underrated Alden Ehrenreich makes use of his chameleonic expertise effectively because the equally susceptible Paul, whereas Austin Abrams and Benedict Wong supply a number of the movie’s extra humorous moments. And Cary Christopher is heartbreaking as Alex, the little boy out of the blue left alone by practically everybody in his life. Every of those characters will get extra growth than is commonly normal in horror movies, which solely provides to the viewer’s funding when all are positioned in peril. And there’s one different efficiency about which we’ll say little – besides that it’s totally chilling.
Ultimate Ideas
Cary Christopher as Alex in New Line Cinema’s ‘Weapons,’ a Warner Bros. Photos launch. Photograph Credit score: Photograph Courtesy Warner Bros. Photos. Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Leisure Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Whereas the horror style itself is just not having as reliable a 12 months as normal on the field workplace (sorry, Blumhouse), Warner Bros. Photos is bucking that pattern: following the stunning ‘Ultimate Vacation spot Bloodlines’ and the transcendent ‘Sinners,’ that is the studio’s third creatively profitable fright fest in a row.
What makes it much more gratifying is that it is a wholly authentic and private piece. The menace on the coronary heart of ‘Weapons’ is one which different movies have touched on earlier than, however not fairly in a state of affairs and setting like this. In that sense, ‘Weapons’ and ‘Barbarian’ do share frequent floor – the concept that evil can spring from probably the most surprising locations at random moments, albeit after festering out of sight for years. It’s a worldview and an strategy that Zach Cregger is, pardon the expression, weaponizing to create a number of the most fascinating work within the style proper now.
“Final evening at 2:17 AM, each youngster from Mrs. Gandy’s class awoke, obtained away from bed, went downstairs, opened the entrance door, walked into the darkish …and so they by no means got here again.”
Showtimes & Tickets
When all however one youngster from the identical class mysteriously vanish on the identical evening at precisely the identical time, a group is left questioning who or what’s behind… Learn the Plot
What’s the plot of ‘Weapons’?
One evening, all however one youngster from Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) classroom mysteriously run off into the evening. Justine and the remainder of the group are left questioning who – or what – is behind the youngsters’s disappearance.
Who’s within the forged of ‘Weapons’?
Josh Brolin as Archer in New Line Cinema’s ‘Weapons,’ a Warner Bros. Photos launch. Photograph Credit score: Photograph Courtesy Warner Bros. Photos Copyright: © 2025 Warner Bros. Leisure Inc. All Rights Reserved.