In a weekend that I could have sworn would be dominated by family-friendly franchise fare “Freakier Friday,” it was R-rated horror movie “Weapons” pulling off the upset. What happened here? I know stars Julia Garner and Josh Brolin have important roles in the MCU, but were they such draws without Garner in silver polymer or Brolin with an oversized chin? Did horror fans flock to the film because of writer/director Zach Cregger? His last film, 2022’s “Barbarian,” has already had its entire domestic box office run eclipsed by “Weapons” in its first weekend alone. An inundation of advertising? I knew the film was coming, but I’d had “Freakier Friday” shoved down my throat for months thanks to the Disney promotional machine.
I think it all just came down to early reviews and word-of-mouth. The film held a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score in the days leading up to its release, and late-stage advertisements wrang every last drop of ketchup out of that (it has since dropped to a still-very-impressive 95%). By the time it opened, the film had a reputation as a surefire future classic. So maybe it’s not a huge surprise that by the time I saw it, the bar might have been set a little too high for the movie to clear it by much.
The advertising didn’t give away much about the film, other than that it’s about missing children. One night, 17 elementary-aged students from a single class of 18 all run away from home, their arms outstretched in the “airplane” pose (which the movie makes very creepy, so get ready for months of references and imitations). The next day, teacher Justine Gandy (Garner) comes to class to find only Alex (Cary Christopher) at his desk and everyone else missing. What happened to the other kids?
The community wants answers, and as days turn into weeks, uncertainty turns into anger, especially among the parents. The police have a battery of questions for both Justine and Alex, but neither know anything. The town doesn’t want to go too hard on little Alex, but they’re not letting Justine off the hook. She becomes a local pariah, even though everyone knows from camera footage that the kids ran away on their own while they were in the care of their parents. If this wasn’t technically an abduction, then what was it? And how can the kids be brought back?
The film switches between several points of view. The film starts out with Justine as the main character, trying to solve the mystery herself and clear her name. But after a while, it starts following frustrated parent Archer (Brolin), who wants to confront Justine. Then it switches to cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) and follows him for a while. Same with principal Andrew (Benedict Wong), drifter James (Austin Abrahms), and of course, Alex. Every character gets the viewer a little bit closer to the answers they crave, before the film backtracks to follow someone new with their own story to tell and their own part to play in the mystery.
Part of the appeal of “Weapons” is how tightly the film can intertwine these characters, so by the end the audience will hopefully feel like they’ve rightly untied a particularly difficult knot. But the movie isn’t as tight as it thinks it is. Sometimes it relies on cheap dream sequences and jump scares, in case people get so wrapped up in the grounded mystery that they forget this is a horror movie. Other times characters have to make stupid or inexplicable decisions to hold off the resolution. Also, sometimes its child narrator (Scarlett Sher) flat-out lies. Those quibbles keep the film from achieving greatness for me. But the film still easily achieves goodness, with some memorable performances, an unsettling atmosphere, some great payoffs, and even a well-earned laugh or two (can’t forget that Cregger was mostly known for sketch comedy prior to “Barbarian”). If my heart is an armory, there’s just enough room for “Weapons.”
Grade: B-
“Weapons” is rated R for strong bloody violence and grisly images, language throughout, some sexual content and drug use. Its running time is 128 minutes.
Robert R. Garver is a graduate of the Cinema Studies program at New York University. His weekly movie reviews have been published since 2006.
Last Update: Aug 11, 2025 11:27 am CDT
