WEAPONS (2025)

For those of you who crave and seek out unique, genre-bending movies, I recommend the 2022 film Barbarian (2022) as it is one of the most distinct films I’d seen in a minute. I excessively recommend it to this day. And so I was excited for writer/director Zach Cregger’s follow-up, and man, it did not disappoint. Weapons explores a plethora of truly wicked horrors: abuse of the innocent, manipulation, apathy, addiction, greed, all taking place in a town in mourning and desperate for answers after seventeen children disappear from the same classroom on the same night at the same time. Needless to say, desperation and powerlessness run amok and into many betrayals of one’s own character as each grapples for answers. Cregger employs the same multi-perspective Rashomon-style narrative structure used in Barbarian to help piece together the mystery, all the while blending terror with dark humour for a tone that elicits fright and flat out laughter. It’s a fairytale, with nods to Roald Dahl, The Brothers Grimm and (Cregger himself noting) Magnolia (1999), Prisoners (2013), The Shining (1980) and Needful Things (1991). Not that any of this distracts as the story and tone are throughly original. Unlike Sinners (2025), another horror film from this year that for some reason everyone seemed to love, but in my opinion paled to the source material it heavily homaged, that being Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s cult crime/vampire flick From Dusk Till Dawn (1996). Weapons on the other hand, borrows and builds from its inspirations to create its own beautiful beast. The cast is an excellent ensemble and no matter whose narrative you’re following, you’re engrossed. Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, Austin Abrams and Cary Christopher all bring lone and identifiable takes to this depraved slice of life. Amy Madigan, who you might remember from such films as Uncle Buck (1989), Field of Dreams (1989) and Gone Baby Gone (2007) is the standout, playing with and against type as Gladys. Side note: Martha Stewart and Anthony Hopkins were dating when The Silence of the Lambs was released in 1991 and Stewart has mentioned that once she saw the film, she couldn’t get the image of him eating people out of her head, and so she ended it. Madigan and Ed Harris have been wedded since 1983, and as a fellow actor, Harris hopefully has the constitution to separate his wife from her roles, because let me tell you, Gladys is terrifying.

WATCH OR NOT: WATCH

Additional musings: The best horror film of the year.