Weapons (2025) – Loaded

Released: 7th August
Seen: 23rd August

In 2022, the film Barbarian was released to an unsuspecting public. No one knew what it was about and audiences kept the core details quiet so everyone could be surprised but there was one thing that was pretty universally acknowledged by those who saw it… Barbarian was one of the best horror movies of 2022. That’s saying quite a lot, because 2022 is widely considered one of the best years for horror cinema in general. Hell, when I made my best-of list for 2022, a solid half of the list was horror films, with Barbarian being the highest on the list. After that movie I was truly excited and a little nervous to see what writer/director Zach Cregger would do for an encore… turns out he would go absolutely fucking insane and for that we thank him and ask him to do it again as soon as possible.

Weapons begins with a simple yet effective inciting incident. One Wednesday morning at 2:17 am, seventeen kids would run from their homes into the night and seemingly vanish. All seventeen of those children are from the class taught by one Justine Grady (Julia Garner), the only student who didn’t run away into the night was Alex (Cary Christopher), who still seems pretty traumatised by the whole affair. After that, what follows is a slow, methodical unravelling of a community, going around the town person by person as the loss of so many children takes this quiet little town and turns it into the stuff of nightmares.

The hard part about reviewing a film like Weapons is that it’s so good, and a lot of what makes it so good is how carefully it holds its biggest cards to its chest. There are so many great moments that would just ruin some of the big surprises to even hint at here, but we’re going to do the best we can. The film is a masterclass in surprises and reveals, taking its time to go from character to character and slowly reveal a little bit more of what’s going on. It might lay a seed of info when we follow Justine around for a bit, only to reveal what that moment meant when the time comes to follow Officer Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) around for a while. The film is carefully structured around the characters it follows, slowly allowing us to get to know these people and making them more relatable before hitting the audience with a sudden, unexpected twist. Do not get complacent with this film; it’s going to fuck with your head and you just have to let it do its thing.

A great part of what makes the film so good at fucking with the audience is how it’s so careful to start about as normal as you could get. Sure, it’s weird that 17 kids just ran off but the film is smart enough to let that be about as weird as things get for almost a half hour of the film before slowly ratcheting up the strangeness until the film is so insane that it puts underwear on its head and is dancing like a chicken. Weapons isn’t afraid to go so far that it can be a little comical, but a very dark comical direction that’s been more than earned by that point. It brilliantly builds tension and discomfort to the point where either the audience has to scream or laugh and there are points where either reaction is acceptable.

What helps ground Weapons in something resembling reality is this stellar cast who are all playing all this weirdness as dead serious as possible. Everyone is almost just doing a serious drama where the situation is the only heightened element… up until the glory that is Gladys (Amy Madigan) who almost takes it as a challenge to be the most brilliantly bizarre character you’ve seen in your life. Seriously, if I could write a goddamn sonnet about Gladys without giving away her entire reason for being in the film, I would. Just trust me when I say that Gladys is an icon, a legend, she is the moment. 

It also certainly doesn’t hurt that Weapons is impressively beautiful, impressive considering how much of it takes place at night or in low lighting. Visual motifs like how people run or the camera gliding about to follow people are such simple little choices but they’re so incredibly effective that it’s hard not to be wowed by them. This is easily one of the most gorgeous-looking horror films of recent years, on top of the laundry list of other things this film does so damn well. It shouldn’t be possible for a film to be visually impressive when so many scenes are in pitch black. Even those scenes have a special visual quality to them, the way the film plays with what’s hiding in the shadows or what might be just barely out of view is so effective that it ensures the second the camera just sits still on an empty room for a few seconds your heart will be beating faster just waiting for someone or something to pop up out of nowhere and scare the crap out of the excited crowd.

Once Weapons does go from something a little more quiet and reserved to absolutely batshit, it revels in its insanity by going all the way. Yes, it will take a little bit for things to really ramp up but if you stick around for a while you’ll be rewarded with glorious insanity served alongside several shocking and brutal moments that would be stunning in an underground horror film but considering the calibre of performer this film has, it’s even more shocking how violent this thing gets. There are more than a few moments when I, as a viewer, was trying to climb back in my seat just from how disturbed I was by what had been put on screen before me.

Weapons is gloriously weird, deliciously twisted and horrifyingly original. This kind of film doesn’t get released, it escapes. Somehow, no one stopped it from breaking containment. It’s absolutely cemented Zach Cregger as a master of modern horror who can pretty much just do whatever he wants and the audience will be there, but it’s also just undeniable proof that there are still some great fun original films out there that can be found among the sequels and IP. Weapons is the kind of fun, batshit horror that we desperately need and I would just like to thank whatever witch cast a spell to make this beautiful thing happen.