Weapons is a horror movie that was number one at the box office for its first two weekends. It’s been one of the few hits of 2025 that’s been an original work. I found Weapons to be an incredibly refreshing mystery thriller that manages to keep its story afloat with characters who are unique and memorable, and a narrative that keeps us invested throughout, even with its topsy-turvy plot taking some detours that might not necessarily pay off in the moment.
It stars Julia Garner as an elementary school teacher in the town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, named Justine Grady, who discovers that all her students have mysteriously vanished except for one named Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher). Alex may hold the truth to why the students are gone, but the town holds Justine as a scapegoat.
Justine tries her best to prove her innocence. She seeks advice from her ex-boyfriend, a cop (Alden Ehrenreich), and an elementary school principal (Benedict Wong), but they only offer her dead ends.
Josh Brolin costars as Archer Graff, one of the parents of the missing children, who starts his own investigation. He does his best to work with Justine on how and why the kids have vanished.
Weapons employs a nonlinear narrative structure to establish its characters as well as their interconnectivity to the plot, and it may be occasionally frustrating until certain individual scenes are reexamined from different perspectives. This is undoubtedly the case with the cop as he tracks down a drug addicted vagrant who might have ties to the disappearances.
Writer/director Zach Cregger, who made Barbarian (2022), has an eye for crafting memorable thrills without sacrificing the story. It may be exasperating at times due to its nonlinear approach, but there’s a method to the madness, without a sense of monotony.
The performances from Brolin and Garner add such emotional heft and psychological validity, making these characters essential to the story as well as fully developed individuals who are not at the mercy of the scares.
The movie’s trailers seem to focus heavily on the children, but the result is misleading, as it centers around the adults. That is actually crucial because if there were greater emphasis on the kids, it would shatter the illusion fairly quickly—big kudos to Cregger for wisely avoiding the temptation.
Like Sinners, this is a horror thriller that takes its time setting up the characters and the story, and only uses its over-the-top thrills at the right moments, allowing them to earn their impact.
Until the unbridled doses of gore dominate the climax, Weapons proves to be a surprisingly effective mystery thriller that can give hope to other filmmakers wanting to deliver the same. Here’s hoping its sense of originality spreads over into other genres.
Grade: A-
(Rated R for intense bloody violence and grisly images, language throughout, some sexual content, and drug use.)
