Weapons review: this eerie, entertaining horror movie confirms genre is a director's playground

The horror genre has truly become a director’s showcase. Robert Eggers (The Witch, Nosferatu), Osgood Perkins (Longlegs, The Monkey), Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar), Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us) and Zach Cregger, whose 2022 horror movie Barbarian put him on the map. Cregger has returned with his follow-up to Barbarian, Weapons, an eerie and entertaining addition to the horror canon.

In addition to directing, Cregger wrote the script for Weapons, which tells the story of a town where all but one student in an elementary school class mysteriously disappear one night. Suspicions are immediately raised around their teacher, Justine (Julia Garner), as parents, including Archer (Josh Brolin), desperately search for answers. Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher and Amy Madigan also star.

Weapons is completely defined by Cregger’s storytelling and direction, as it overshadows just about everything else, including the performances of his notable cast (with one exception).

Let’s start with the story. Cregger plays around with structure, telling the story in chapters that focus primarily on specific characters, with some overlap or bleeding into one another. This slowly reveals the secrets of the movie, doling out answers and key info bit by bit until the third act and the whole picture comes into view. It’s similar to his jump cuts in Barbarian, but here it is more about slowly stringing the audience along. While it definitely is a slow burn, this strategy works to keep the audience actively engaged.

Supporting that is Cregger’s directing style, particularly his mastery of creating tone. For all two hours of the movie there is an undeniable sense of dread hovering over everything. But Cregger doesn’t achieve that with overt stylistic choices (outside of a couple of dream sequences), it’s his tracking of characters, lingering on certain things, letting his scariest moments play out slowly rather than with jump scares and the blending darker elements with touches of humor that give the movie its unique sensibility.

Having said that, I do have a couple of small gripes. One that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense is that characters are affected by something at different parts of the movie but we never get an effective answer as to how or why that happens; the movie’s big reveals don’t give a satisfying answer to this.

Also, the movie’s message isn’t particularly clear, at least on first viewing. When I watched Barbarian I could quickly get what Cregger was going for with his story, as well as simply being entertained by what’s unfolding on screen. With Weapons, the story itself is interesting, but what exactly I should be taking away from it is muddled at best. Sometimes you don’t need an obvious message, but it can make the difference between a good and great movie; in this case it has me liking Barbarian a little bit better than Weapons.

With Weapons being the Cregger show, it relegates most of his ensemble as mostly forgettable. That’s not to say that Julia Garner or Josh Brolin are bad; their characters are perfectly fine subjects for us to follow as the mystery is unraveled. But we’re not as interested in what’s going on specifically with them as we are with the overall mystery of the story.

The one exception in the cast is Amy Madigan. Best known for her work in the 1980s, particularly in the classic Field of Dreams and her Oscar-nominated role in Twice in a Lifetime, Madigan has her best role in years in Weapons and she makes the most of it, stealing every scene she’s in. The role she has definitely is designed to draw our attention, but what she does with her performance is exceptional.

Weapons is a very good horror movie, but it’s not one just for the horror diehards (I definitely don’t consider myself as such). Because the movie relies more on tone than things like jump scares (though there are a couple snuck in there) it should be more accessible to a broader audience. Basically, if you’re interested in good filmmaking and a story that will keep you fully invested, then Cregger’s Weapons is worth watching.

Weapons releases exclusively in movie theaters in the US, UK and around the world on August 8.