Weapons (2025)

I went into Weapons with serious trepidation and some heavy baggage. Zach Creggar's previous film, 2022's Barbarian, was heavily praised by audiences and critics alike, and yet I thought it was dreadfully dull. Especially after an opening twenty minutes which had promised so much.

So when the reviews for his follow up, Weapons, proved equally as strong, I took it very much with a pinch of salt. Weapons is set in a Twin Peaks- like small town, where we learn that seventeen school children have recently all disappeared from their homes one night, all at the same time, and all spotted on ring-doorbells, fleeing in the same bizarre physical way- with their arms held out beside them. It's a creepy image, and one that the film repeatedly returns to.

What's more disturbing is that all seventeen were in the same class- Julia Garner's Ms. Grady's to be precise. One child didn't disappear; Cary Christopher's Alex. The police are baffled, parents are incensed (including Josh Brolin's Archer), and we're left to try and figure it all out.

The good news, is that Weapons is a far superior film to Barbarian, almost in every respect. Like Barbarian, the set up is intriguing. Unlike Barbarian, Weapons follows through on its intent. While Weapons might not be the full on horror film that it's been sold as, there are enough creepy moments in it to keep you on edge.

Weapons is split into Rashomon (1950)-like sections, as we see the story interconnecting characters and events, and this works rather well, and on occasion leads to some genuinely interesting revelations. The film works best when we aren't aware of anything, and especially gripping when Archer begins his own investigation into proceedings after the police fail to turn up anything.

In fact Weapons is pretty gripping for its entire first hour, and then there's a very definite point when something happens and it feels like a first misstep. Creggar has built up something that you're genuinely gripped by, and when this point comes halfway through, you realise that you don't necessarily want answers. It's to the film's credit that it then hauls you back in, helped by a cast that is firing well, and keeps you interested until the rather silly finale.

Here, Creggar slips into the same territory he did with Barbarian, seemingly needing to tie things up and give us an ending, but he doesn't- leaving this open ended would arguably have made it more terrifying.

Still, the fact that you're enjoying this and are very much interested almost until the end proves how much better it is than Barbarian. Not only that, this is a very decent chiller whose main fault is in attempting to answer as many questions as it asks. For his next trick, Creggar should just go full Lynch; and that is something I would very much like to see. 7.2/10