‘Weapons' Review: Elevated Horror, But Fun

Man of Many

3 days ago

By Dean Blake - News
Published: 11 Aug 2025
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Readtime: 7 min
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Weapons is a film I've been looking forward to for a while. When I saw the initial teaser trailer, which shows off the main hook of the whole movie—a class of kids get out of bed at 2:17am and run into the night, disappearing into the dark, leaving a community grasping for answers—I was sold. Now, after having seen the movie, I can say the wait was worth it.
Ostensibly in the same universe as director Zach Creggar's previous film, Barbarian, Weapons skirts the line between multiple genres, flipping between character study, body horror, chilling mystery, and deep shades of dark comedy. That'd be a tall order for most movies, but somehow Creggar nails the execution: in my theatre, you could hear a pin drop when Weapons wanted to be tense, and enjoyed bouts of laughter in moments of levity.
By the time the credits rolled, people were clapping with joy. That's not how horror movies tend to end, but Weapons there's a reason why this film opened at the top of the box office: it's really good.
With a mystery at its core, Weapons works best when you don't have the 'twist' spoiled before you go in, so if you're at all interested in seeing the movie before comparisons to other movies start to unravel what is going on here, I recommend you make the time.
With that out of the way, let's talk Weapons.
Weapons (2025) | Image: Warner Bros.
Genre-Bending Horror
Weapons is unabashedly a horror movie, and a very competent one at that, but much of what makes this movie work is how fluidly it swings into other genres at a pretty regular clip. It's probably the funniest horror movie I've seen in a while, but it never feels unintentional: you're always laughing with the movie, not at it. Creggar has spoken about how the original script had jokes written into it (he was once in a comedy troupe, you know), but that they just weren't landing. So, instead, he gave the characters far more natural responses to situations which, in my opinion, delivered some serious moments of relatable humour.
Brolin's character Archer awakening from a highly emotional and shocking dream, only to wait a beat before exclaiming, 'what the fuck!', is one of the most human moments I've seen in a horror movie in some time. That is exactly how a real person would respond to that dream, and echoes how you feel after watching it all play out: so much so that it elicited a genuine laugh from the audience, timed perfectly after a jump scare to ease the built-up tension.
But Weapons isn't just tense and funny, it's also camp, and revels in the brutality of what can happen to a body when it is hit with enough force. There's some genuine gross-out moments here, but they never linger, and they're never a surprise. In fact, for a modern horror flick, the film shows a lot of restraint in the use of jump scares. I think I counted only three throughout the whole movie, and all of them are signposted so hard that it'd be tough to be caught off guard.
Josh Brolin as 'Archer Graff' in 'Weapons' (2025) | Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
A Character Study
In the most surprising twist of all, Weapons is horror movie that lives and dies on its characters. This is a genre renowned for pitting trope-laden characters against trope-laden villains (Or, more recently, personifications of those characters' guilt or trauma), but Weapons manages to deliver a diverse cast of well-thought out and believable characters who, by the mid-way point of the film, have all endeared themselves to you. Or, at least they did to me.
Every one of them acts in ways that make sense given what we know about them—a rarity in horror, where teenagers routinely head into haunted houses for 'fun', only to do incredibly stupid things in the name of our enjoyment.
I expected Julia Garner and Josh Brolin to serve as the main driving force of the movie, and they kind of do, but Weapons gives equal weight to multiple POV characters throughout its runtime whose stories intersect with each other and the broader mystery of the missing kids, before all crashing together at the end for what will no doubt go down as one of the most wild and out-of-pocket endings to a horror movie in recent memory.
Julie Garner as 'Justine Grady' in 'Weapons' (2025) | Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
Garner absolutely kills it as the disgraced and somewhat-flirty Justine Gandy, whose classroom vanished and is now suspect number one for many parents, including Josh Brolin's grieving father Archer Graff. The interplay between an accuser and a suspect eventually bonding over their shared grief was interesting, and does serve as the backbone of a story with some human cost attached to it.
But it was Alden Ehrenreich's police officer Paul and Austin Abrams' junkie James that really stole the show, in my eyes. Paul, a former addict turned cop, is clearly an unhappy man—he lies to and cheats on his wife, while working for her father, knowing full well the consequences of that. You get the feeling that his father-in-law got him the job to help Paul get his shit together, and that he's not really cut out to be a cop.
James, on the other hand, is incredibly down on his luck, stealing anything he can get his hands on to pawn for the chance of a hit of a drug addiction that is clearly in full control, but is also often the funniest character on screen. Knowing that Abrams is the lead in Creggar's next film, a new, more grounded interpretation of the Resident Evil series, actually has me incredibly excited to see what the pair can do together.
Then, we have the sole remaining child from Gandy's class, Alex Lilly played by Cary Christopher, and his aunt, Amy Madigan's Gladys Lilly, who deliver standout performances. A movie centred on kids can often live or die on its child actors, and Christopher nailed it.
Weapons (2025) | Image: Warner Bros.
Elevated Horror, but Fun
A lot of horror movies tend to feel cheaply made, but Weapons is about as well-crafted, shot, and edited as you could want. The shot composition is often fantastic, and though the movie is often very dark (due to people skulking around at night, or in a boarded up house), it never felt like I was missing important information about what was happening by way of poor lighting.
It's clear a lot of love went into Weapons, and what has resulted is something that takes the best parts of the 'elevated horror' boom without hitting you over the head with its metaphors. Yes, almost every character in Weapons has a relationship with alcohol or drugs. Yes, there's a lot of talk of parasites that slowly kill their hosts. Yes, Creggar wrote Weapons while grieving the passing of a friend, and that through-line of unexpected and sudden loss, and a subsequent search for answers, is front and centre.
But those inklings of trauma and grief are only ever used to support the movie: they never dominate it.
Man of Many's Verdict
I can't recommend Weapons enough, and feel as though it's one of the most creative movies I've seen in a long time: not only in the way it weaves multiple plots, genres, characters, and metaphors into something that never comes off as disjointed, but in just how much more it feels like Creggar has left to give.
It wasn't clear if Creggar could back up another great movie after the success of Barbarian, but Weapons is essentially a better movie in every way. Get to the theatre before someone spoils the fun for you.
★★★★☆