'Weapons' review: Zach Cregger delivers a horror mystery for the ages

Courtesy of Warner Bros./New Line

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Between Jordan Peele and now Zach Cregger, the sketch-comedian-to-horror-auteur pipeline is officially thriving. Two years after blindsiding audiences with the insane basement burner “Barbarian,” Cregger has returned with “Weapons,” a bold, darkly funny horror mystery that feels like nothing else in theaters. In a summer clogged with recycled IP, he’s delivered something sharp, strange, and unforgettable: a nerve-jangling puzzle box of intersecting stories and a central mystery that’s very compelling. 

Shot with eerie precision by “Everything Everywhere All at Once” cinematographer Larkin Seiple and cut to razor-sharp effect by editor Joe Murphy, “Weapons” is a dense, unnerving commentary on grief, trauma, and the human instinct to assign blame when tragedy strikes. The hook is as chilling as they come: in the fictional town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, 17 fifth graders from the same classroom vanished at 2:17 a.m., sprinting into the night and never came back. This is all told in an opening voiceover that feels like the start of some horrific fairy tale, the disappearance sets the entire town on edge, and suspicion quickly lands on their teacher, Justine Gandy (a rock-solid Julia Garner). She has to know something, right?

Cregger tells the story in distinct, overlapping chapters, each from a different perspective, each adding a new shard to the puzzle. There’s Paul (a grizzled Alden Ehrenreich), Justine’s ex and a police officer teetering on the edge of a breakdown; Archer (a commanding Josh Brolin), desperate to understand why his son joined the mysterious midnight dash; Andrew (Benedict Wong), the school principal tasked with keeping a panicked community together; James (Austin Abrams), a drug addict whose talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time adds bursts of sly, uncomfortable humor; and Alex (Cary Christopher), the only child from Ms. Gandy’s class who, oddly enough, didn’t disappear.

The shifting perspectives do more than just feed the mystery; they build a portrait of a community unraveling. Cregger captures the paranoia, the way grief morphs into blame, and how everyone convinces themselves they’re one step away from an answer. At times, the missing kids fade from the immediate narrative, but their absence lingers, a constant ache in the back of your mind. One conversation with Ms. Gandy becomes a thinly veiled commentary on America’s epidemic of gun violence, and it’s hard not to see “Weapons” as a broader allegory for the senseless, preventable deaths that haunt our schools. Cregger refuses to give us clean answers, leaning instead into discomfort and ambiguity.

Where many horror mysteries collapse under the weight of their reveals, “Weapons” only gets stronger. The third act is both wild and heartbreakingly grounded, leading to a final shot that’s one for the ages, a devastating reminder that trauma doesn’t simply fade, no matter how much you try to rebuild. It’s about the paradox of our most cherished things also being the ones capable of hurting us most.

Cregger wears his influences proudly: Ari Aster’s dread, Jordan Peele’s social commentary, a hint of “It” and “Stranger Things,” but the result feels wholly his own. (In a fun bit of trivia, Peele reportedly fired his reps after they failed to land Cregger’s pitch.) And in the film’s later stretch, Amy Madigan delivers a powerhouse turn as Chris’s long-lost Aunt Gladys, a role so magnetic awards voters should be paying close attention. 

If “Barbarian” thrived on its deceptively simple setup, “Weapons” shows Cregger fully in command of a sprawling, layered narrative. He loads the frame with subtle background details that enrich the world and characters, rewarding attentive viewers. It’s a bold, original work dropped into the dog days of summer, a time when studios once dumped their turkeys, in the hopes people would forget about their crappy movies and move on. “Weapons” is the exact opposite: people will be talking about this movie and its impact for generations to come. 

Grade: A 

WEAPONS is now playing in theaters.