In a quiet American town, 17 children vanish one night. The CCTV shows them sleepwalking into the darkness with their arms outstretched — like something out of a shared nightmare. Only one kid, a silent boy named Alex, stays behind and claims to know nothing.
The children all belonged to the same class. Their teacher, Justine (played by the always-impressive Julia Garner), becomes the center of suspicion — despite having no real evidence against her. The town turns hostile, and Justine finds herself drinking vodka by the bottle as threats escalate and someone scrawls “WITCH” on her car in bright red paint.
From here, Weapons splinters into a multi-perspective horror mystery, following a range of characters tied to the case: grieving parents, failing cops, school staff, and even a mysterious drifter. Think Barbarian meets Magnolia, with a little Sinister flavor for good measure.
✅ What Works
- A bold, unpredictable structure: Writer-director Zach Cregger (Barbarian) swings for the fences with a multi-threaded narrative. It doesn’t always land, but it keeps you leaning forward.
- Julia Garner carries her role with grace and grit. Her Justine is fragile but not broken, manipulative yet empathetic — a complex portrait of a woman barely holding it together.
- Josh Brolin (stepping in for Pedro Pascal) is perfectly cast as a father on the edge. Alden Ehrenreich plays an inept cop with a mustache and a big heart — which is somehow both sad and funny.
- The tone dances between dread, dark humor, and surreal horror. Some scenes will genuinely make your skin crawl, others will leave you smirking in disbelief.
- A great sense of genre play: Fans of Get Out, Hereditary, and The Blackcoat’s Daughter will appreciate the way Weapons toys with horror tropes while asking bigger questions.
❌ Where It Falls Short
- The middle drags. A two-hour runtime means Weapons starts losing steam around the halfway mark, especially when the story starts to repeat its beats.
- Not all threads hit equally. Some characters feel paper-thin or don’t earn the emotional weight the film tries to assign them.
- The finale is messy. When the mystery starts to unravel, the third act can’t quite keep up with the film’s ambition — it teeters between grand reveal and narrative pile-up.
- Self-serious moments feel unearned. Cregger invites comparisons to Magnolia — a risky flex — but Weapons lacks that film’s emotional punch and coherence.
Final Verdict: 3/5
Weapons doesn’t reinvent the horror genre, but it proves that Zach Cregger isn’t a one-hit wonder. It’s a twisty, moody, sometimes messy supernatural mystery that aims high and delivers enough to entertain — even if it doesn’t fully stick the landing.
Watch it for the performances, the chilling premise, and the fun of trying to connect the dots before the movie does it for you.
Would you follow the children into the dark?
