Pan and Slam

Weapons

R 2h 8m

• Director
  • Zach Cregger
• Writer
  • Zach Cregger
• Stars
  • Julia Garner
  • Josh Brolin
  • Alden Ehrenreich

by Jason Koenigsberg

Writer/Director Zach Cregger returns to tell a tale about suburban decay in the guise of a horror movie with Weapons. This is his follow up to his highly effective thriller Barbarian (2022) and it is wildly entertaining. Weapons is simultaneously the funniest and scariest movie of 2025 thus far. The film opens up with a child narrating the events that we will see, saying that it is based on a true story but the police will never reveal what will happen after they explain the exposition. The narrator states this over a black screen and then the first shots are of an elementary school that could be practically any suburban town in the USA. From looking at the license plates it may be Pennsylvania. The plot involves children in the same elementary school class all running out of their homes at 2:17am and running away. Only one student in the class remained after all the others ran outside and vanished. The parents want an explanation but the lone student and the teacher of the class have no answers.

The narrator explains the plot in the first five minutes, with great usage of the George Harrison song “Beware of Darkness”, and from that point on Weapons becomes a character driven story. The exposition is quick and right up front, allowing the movie to develop the characters and they carry the load of the story the rest of the way. It follows certain characters involved with the disappearance of these students and their connection to the events and unfolds in a sort of Rashomon style where we see the same events from a different point of view. Each character’s perspective reveals more of the mystery as a it unravels and by the end the audience knows what they need to for an explosive and hilarious climax.

The less said about the plot the better from this point on, just put your faith in the director and he will take you on a raucous ride that is worth every moment. Weapons captures what public schools in America feel like in 2025 and even uses the appropriate language as needed such as ‘mandated reporters’, and referring to CPS instead of DYFS. Everything about Weapons feels realistic as how people would react if almost an entire class of children were to go missing in the middle of the night without any explanation. This movie creates characters and an atmosphere that feels as if we could live in this town and we know these people. That way when this movie does go to dark places we are lured in because we believe we know these characters well and could live in this setting. Trust me, Weapons does go to some very eerie and tense places. This movie has some of the most relentless and unsettling scary moments in darkness that a viewer could imagine and it delivers. It also delivers some of the most unexpected laugh out loud funny moments that even if you see them coming you will not be able to predict how you would react to the shocking images.

Weapons has strong influence from David Lynch’s work the way it combines horror and humor to show the dark side of suburbia. Amy Madigan plays a strange character and the first time we see her in a well lit scene, she looks like she walked right off the set of Twin Peaks. Early on the film has symbolism with alcohol and a teacher’s reliance on it, a police officer trying to battle his addiction to it, and red paint, or red in general on wigs and lipstick, seems to hint at violence and a sickness that certain people in this movie have. All of the actors are perfectly cast for their roles. Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan sell the realism when they need to and go over the top to just the right degree when the script demands them to. It was also nice seeing Justin Long in a small role. He had a more significant part in Zach Cregger’s previous horror film.

With Barbarian Zach Cregger was saying something about American suburbs and the decay and rot underneath that was caused by policies from the Reagan era and how they caused unemployment in the Rust Belt and destroyed industries, towns, and families and how that poverty is effecting young people’s optimism in dying cities like Detroit. With Weapons, he is saying more about how our education system is failing to protect our children and how our older generation, the baby boomers, are trying so hard to weaponize our youth and use them to keep themselves alive, or in power, for longer than they should instead of passing the torch to the next generation, the millennials, who are now parents and making up the bulk of the work force but seem clueless as to how to control the narrative of their lives and their careers.