‘Weapons’ Review: Julia Garner and Josh Brolin Lead Zach Cregger’s Ambitious, Uneven but Mesmerizing Horror Mystery

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Aug 9

Written By Jonathan P. Moustakas

A chilling, style-drenched descent into small-town terror, ‘Weapons’ wields atmosphere like a blade — but struggles to land a lasting emotional blow.

Zach Cregger’s Barbarian was one of the breakout genre surprises of 2022, the kind of horror debut that announced a filmmaker with both vision and nerve. His follow-up, Weapons, carries the weight of expectation — and in many ways, it doubles down on ambition. This Warner Bros. horror mystery trades the claustrophobic nightmare of his debut for a sprawling, multi-perspective narrative centered on a single impossible event: in the dead of night, 17 elementary school children leave their homes at exactly 2:17 a.m., arms outstretched, running into the darkness — and vanish without a trace.

What follows is not a conventional missing-persons procedural but a fractured tapestry of grief, suspicion, and barely contained madness. The disappearance grips the fictional town of Maybrook like a vice, leaving parents, teachers, and law enforcement in a state of panicked paranoia. The strange figure glimpsed in the shadows — part circus grotesque, part urban legend — pushes the film toward the surreal, echoing both Stephen King’s small-town dread and David Lynch’s off-kilter menace.

Cregger’s script parcels the story into chapters, each told from a different character’s perspective. Julia Garner’s Justine Gandy, a third-grade teacher who arrives at school to find just one student in her class, anchors the early stretch. Her scenes are taut with unease, as she becomes the town’s scapegoat, enduring harassment, threats, and public humiliation. Garner plays her with a brittle strength — a woman whose compassion for her students hides a survivalist streak born of hard living. Josh Brolin’s Archer, a grieving father quick to assign blame, enters the story in simmering bursts, his suspicion eventually giving way to reluctant alliance. Alden Ehrenreich’s small-town cop, Benedict Wong’s embattled headmaster, and Austin Abrams’ desperate drifter all contribute pieces to the puzzle.

Visually, Weapons is a showcase for cinematographer Larkin Seiple, who brings a hypnotic glide to the camera, crafting long, winding tracking shots that draw viewers deeper into Maybrook’s nightmare. Cregger favors practical effects over CGI, lending the climactic set-pieces a grimy, tactile power. The score, composed by brothers Ryan and Hays Holladay with contributions from Cregger himself, veers from mournful strings to guttural industrial pulses, amplifying the film’s oscillation between melancholy and chaos.

Yet for all its craft, Weapons often feels more interested in mood than meaning. The disappearance of the children invites allegory — empty classrooms and grieving parents naturally evoke the trauma of gun violence and communal loss — but the script rarely commits to a thematic throughline. The central supernatural element, involving occult hints and a late-film descent into grotesque, witchy horror, is stylish but underexplained, leaving the climax thrilling in the moment but hollow in retrospect.

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That climax, however, is a wild thing to behold. In a blur of violence, betrayal, and primal survival, Cregger stages a feral showdown that’s part Lord of the Flies, part grindhouse fever dream. A late-arriving performance — best left unspoiled — pushes the film into near-camp absurdity while somehow maintaining tension. It’s here that Cregger’s balancing act between horror and dark comedy is most precarious, but also most exhilarating.

Ultimately, Weapons cements Cregger’s reputation as a genre stylist with a knack for conjuring dread from both the ordinary and the absurd. It’s an audacious second feature — flawed, yes, and thematically thin — but rich in atmosphere, texture, and the unnerving thrill of watching a filmmaker swing for the fences. Whether you find its mysteries tantalizing or frustrating may depend on your tolerance for unanswered questions. What’s certain is that you won’t forget the sight of those children running into the night, or the lingering chill of not knowing where they went.