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Digital Trends
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Weapons review: a mind-blowing cinematic nightmare
Weapons Score Details 'Zach Cregger's Weapons is a heat-seeking missile armed with rich storytelling and mind-blowing terror.' Pros Zach Cregger's terrifying direction An incredible ensemble cast A layered and surprising story Cons Some characters may leave audiences wanting more 'Why you can trust Digital Trends – We have a 20-year history of testing, reviewing, and rating products, services and apps to help you make a sound buying decision. Find out more about how we test and score products.' Writer-director Zach Cregger (Barbarian) has delivered another frightening masterpiece with his new blockbuster, Weapons. This ensemble horror epic follows the residents of Maybrook after 17 children from the same classroom all walk out of their homes and disappear at 2:17 a.m., unleashing a wave of terror and confusion on everyone. Recommended Videos Cregger made a spectacular step forward as a horror filmmaker with Weapons, proving that his success with Barbarian wasn't a fluke. Like directors Jordan Peele and John Krasinski, Cregger succeeds in branching out from his comedy roots and establishing himself as one of the brightest, most distinctive horror directors working today with his winding, layered story of an ordinary town that descends into Hell. Unique, unbridled, unpredictable Weapons presents a nonlinear narrative from multiple characters' perspectives. Specifically, it follows Justine (Julia Garner), father Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), police officer Paul Morgan (Alden Ehrenreich), principal Andrew Marcus (Benedict Wong), homeless drug addict Anthony (Austin Abrams), and Justine's remaining student Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher). This story sends the audience on a terrifying odyssey through Maybrook and unravels the film's layered mystery from several points of view. Though this narrative could've been hard to follow, the movie neatly organizes all its different storylines and has them converge in many surprising ways. Harkening back to Stephen King's It, the setting of Maybrook itself becomes a character as it reveals the personal demons haunting its various townspeople through an explicit supernatural lens. After the kids from Justine's class disappear, the parents of the missing kids direct all their fear, sorrow, and hatred toward Justine as they blame her for this baffling tragedy and demand answers. However, Weapons presents a rich mosaic of human misery with its expansive narrative, which showcases its characters living through grief, drug addiction, alcoholism, police brutality, school bullying, and familial abuse. Like many great horror movies, Weapons shows that the true monsters aren't witches and zombies but the ones living deep inside ourselves and our neighbors. A rich cast of conflicted characters As a dark, harrowing portrait of small-town America, Weapons and its cast bring many flawed and realistic characters to life. Julia Garner gives a layered performance as the well-meaning but misunderstood Justine. While the character's relationship with Paul could've been fleshed out more, Garner's dysfunctional romantic chemistry with co-star Alden Ehrenreich makes these two lovers seem especially real. Meanwhile, Josh Brolin generates rage and sympathy as the grieving and confused Archer, particularly with his tear-jerking nightmare about his son. Though Archer's character clashes with Justine, the line-crossing actions they take to get to the truth make them strong reflections of each other. Austin Abrams delivers swift comic relief playing the twitchy, crack-addicted James, whose short-lived subplot makes for a wild ride. Meanwhile, the young Cary Christopher stands out with his performance as Alex, realistically conveying the terror, torment, and confusion felt by a child being held hostage by his own family. While her character didn't get her own segment, Amy Madigan steals the show as Aunt Gladys. Without giving away too much, Madigan cements her character as an instant horror icon Weapons unloads great terror and suspense Like with Barbarian, Cregger proves he is a master of invoking extreme terror and building tension with Weapons. The horror is well-rounded with a terrifying blend of nail-biting suspense and genuinely surprising jump scares. The scare factor is only elevated by Scarlett Sher's unsettling narration, Larkin Seiple's eerie cinematography, and a chilling musical score created through Cregger's collaboration with Ryan and Hays Holladay. Though Weapons is a slow burn, its moments of horror are intense and unforgettable. With a bug-eyed Benedict Wong chasing after Justine and Aunt Gladys popping up in people's dreams, the film turns a seemingly ordinary Maybrook into a town filled with terrors. It all crescendos with the film's suspenseful, frightening final act, which features one of the wildest, most cathartic kills ever seen in a horror movie. The film blends its ultra-horrifying moments with bits of dark humor that will leave audiences screaming and laughing. With Archer repeatedly punching a brainwashed man to Gladys fleeing from a mob across the neighborhood like Ferris Bueller, Weapons shows Cregger flexing his comedic chops to send audiences on an emotional roller coaster. Is Weapons worth a watch? Weapons is hands-down one of the most bizarre and terrifying horror movies of the decade. It's a must-see for fans of the genre. Cregger continues to share a fresh voice as a filmmaker thanks to his movie's unconventional narrative with realistic characters and incredible terror. If Cregger continues to make terrifying blockbusters after Weapons, then the world of cinema is better off for it. Weapons is now playing in theaters.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Weapons' Ending Explained: Why Did 17 Kids from the Same Classroom All Leave Their Homes at 2:17 a.m.?
The mysterious 'Weapons,' Zach Cregger's viral follow-up to 2022's 'Barbarian,' is in theaters now Weapons is the movie of the moment for horror fans. Zach Cregger's highly anticipated follow-up to 2022's Barbarian has effectively kicked off scary-movie season for lovers of the genre everywhere, promising a wild ride through its genius marketing. As promised from eerie preview footage — not to mention the very convincing — the story follows a small town turned upside down after the unexplained phenomenon of 17 children, all from the same third-grade class, waking up and running out of their homes one Tuesday night at exactly 2:17 a.m. Only one, a boy named Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), stays behind. Imagery of the children all running with their arms outstretched through dark, dimly lit suburbia has become the 2020s-era "Blair Witch victim standing in the corner" for many horror fans, and has stoked the flames of the question: What happened to these kids? 'It's a twisty, turny movie," director Cregger, 44, teased of Weapons, which he also wrote, at CinemaCon 2025 in April, per Variety. "It's a movie that unravels and reinvents itself as it goes." Here's everything to know about the end of Weapons. Warning: spoilers ahead! What is behind the kids' disappearance? Weapons opens with a voiceover from a female student at Maybrook Elementary School explaining the "true story" that happened two years prior, before going into the aftermath. The story then jumps among several characters' points of view, beginning with the affected class's teacher, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), followed by concerned parent Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), whose son Matthew is missing, and ending with the lone remaining student, Alex. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human-interest stories. Eventually, the audience learns that Alex's parents have welcomed his mom's sick aunt, "Gladys" (Amy Madigan), into their home for a temporary stay — only for Gladys to immediately pull some witchcraft that possesses first Alex's parents and then Ms. Gandy's third-grade class. Afterward, several characters see materializations of Gladys around town in different, clownish-makeup-covered images, including Justine on the ceiling above her bed and a homeless drug addict/thief named James (Austin Abrams) in the woods near his tent. Who is Gladys, and why is she terrorizing Maybrook's kids? Gladys is described by Alex's mother (Callie Schuttera) as a great-aunt who is staying with her and her husband (Whitmer Thomas) for a while due to a serious illness. After Gladys puts a spell on Mr. and Mrs. Lilly while Alex is at school one day, she forces them to self-mutilate in front of Alex — then threatens to kill them if he tells anyone what is happening at home. Once Gladys realizes the paralysis of Alex's parents doesn't sustain her life force quite enough, she promises to leave Alex's home for good as long as he brings her an object from each of his classmates, so she can concoct a mixture that brings them all to his home — which eventually ends up happening at 2:17 a.m. one night. One of the later sequences, from Alex's point of view, shows the kids all barreling into his home and right down into the basement, where Alex feeds them soup over the next several weeks as Gladys is implied to feed off their health. What happens to Justine? Does she get possessed? Survive? Poor Justine is not only the immediate object of the Maybrook Elementary School parents' ire — to the point where the principal, Andrew Marcus (Benedict Wong), forces her to take a leave of absence — but she also takes to binge drinking and gets attacked by a jealous wife (June Diane Raphael) for hooking up with old flame Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), after he lied about being single. But she and Archer are soon digging into the case of the missing kids on their own as Paul and his fellow police officers aren't working up to scratch, in Justine and Archer's eyes. And while Archer and Justine face the wrath of Gladys near the end of the film — mainly, through possession of both Paul and James — they both come away with their lives. What happens to Gladys? In a particularly satisfying end to Gladys' sinister agenda, Alex holes himself up in the guest bathroom his aunt has been using as his possessed parents attempt to rip down the door. With some quick thinking, Alex manages to use a bewitched stick Gladys has been using to control her "weapons" — wrapping some of Gladys' hair from the bathroom floor around it and snapping it in half to kick off the insane climax of the film. Immediately, the 17 children in Alex's basement flee the home, jumping through glass windows and anything else standing in their way and chasing Gladys through the community. They eventually catch up with her ... and the rest of the scene plays out not entirely unlike how a lion might tear apart a (rabid?) wildebeest. What happens to the possessed adults and kids? While many characters don't make it — including Paul, James and Marcus, who also kills his partner Terry (Clayton Farris) in a particularly chilling manner — all the kids do, albeit with major trauma. According to the child narrator, though, some of her affected schoolmates have already regained their ability to talk as of a year after the incident that shook Maybrook. Alex's parents, however, have been institutionalized, while he goes to live with an aunt who is described as being much nicer than her predecessor. Weapons is in theaters now. Read the original article on People
Forbes
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Weapons' Review: The Best Movie I've Seen All Year
I had no idea what to expect going into Weapons, the latest movie from Barbarian writer/director, Zach Cregger. I'd seen one trailer. I didn't read anything else about the film. I went in blind, and you should, too. The following review will be spoiler-free outside of the basic premise. Trust me, you should go into this movie without knowing anything past the basics. I don't even want to spoil too much of my own reaction to this film. I'll do a follow-up post digging into the specifics in a couple days, here on this blog, so stay tuned. The setup is pretty straightforward. One night, at exactly 2:17 am in the fictional town of Maybrook, seventeen children from the same 3rd grade class all simultaneously leave their homes and vanish. Only one child shows up to school the next day. Their teacher, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) is immediately suspected of some wrongdoing. Why else would all these kids from the same class simply up and disappear? What follows is part horror movie, part Brothers Grimm fairytale, part black comedy, with little nods to Stephen King and Roald Dahl, among others. It's really hard to describe. Even if I littered this review with spoilers, it would be hard to explain why it works so well, and why it feels absolutely singular and unique. I'm so used to formulaic slop, and not just in the horror genre. This felt new. Cregger's nonlinear, Rashomon-style storytelling helps the various characters and their stories unfold into something truly remarkable. It starts out a bit slow, and at first I worried it was going to be just another horror movie with some jump scares and suspense. I couldn't have been more wrong. The two-hours and eight-minute runtime flew by, as we were sucked deeper and deeper into the weird, surprisingly hilarious and twisted tale of these missing children and the people searching for them, including Archer (Josh Brolin) the father of one of the missing kids, and school principal, Andrew Marcus (Benedict Wong). The scene stealer, however, the dark horse of this film, was Austin Abrams as homeless drug addict, James – though he shares some of the best scenes with Alden Ehrenreich's Paul Morgan, a police officer who has seen better days. I really enjoyed Sinners earlier this year (you can read my review here) but no matter how great it was, I couldn't help shake the sense that it borrowed just a tad too much from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's From Dusk Till Dawn. I don't think that takes away from how genuinely great the movie was (and honestly, what a year for quality horror!) but it was a nagging thought throughout. Weapons, on the other hand, is something unto itself. I've never seen anything quite like it, despite whatever cultural references are sprinkled throughout. There are many ways you could interpret this film. Is it an allegory for school shootings? On some level, I think so. Is it about the many ways we, as humans, can be weaponized – our words, are interactions, our bodies, our thoughts? Definitely. But it's also a modern fairy tale that never gets bogged down in allegory. There is nothing preachy here, no in-your-face political message that takes away from your enjoyment of the film. In the end, it's just wildly entertaining. There's so much to unpack here. Look for my follow-up piece here on this blog and on my YouTube channel.
Wall Street Journal
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Weapons' Review: Zach Cregger's Communal Horror
Zach Cregger's 'Weapons' arrives in a world raw with large-scale grief, unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic, mass shootings, natural disasters and more. And so its premise has an unshakeable potency: One night, at 2:17 a.m., 17 third-grade students in a small town called Maybrook run out of their houses and disappear. The ensuing drama is full of pain, uncertainty, wild accusations, strange happenings and visceral nightmares. This is a horror movie about the convulsion of a whole community. Mr. Cregger's breakout hit in 2022 was 'Barbarian,' the effectively frightening haunted-Airbnb thriller set in a decayed neighborhood of Detroit. His new film is considerably more ambitious, not to mention idyllically suburban. It begins with a child's narration: 'This is a true story,' the young voice says. 'A lot of people die.' And then the movie gets immediately to its narrative hook, as we watch those 17 children running along Maybrook's dark streets, their arms eerily stretched back like wings, or maybe the tail fins of a missile, all to the sound of George Harrison's 'Beware of Darkness.' The apt but strangely dreamy song only adds to the unexpected tone and directness of this opening sequence, which hews more closely to awestruck Spielbergian storytelling than to the setup of a horror film.
South China Morning Post
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Weapons movie review: horror mystery by Barbarian director Zach Cregger is oddly hypnotic
4/5 stars Advertisement One of the more powerful horror films to arrive this year, Weapons begins with a child's voice-over explaining that 17 kids have gone missing from the small US town of Maybrook. Creepier still, they all left their homes at exactly the same time – 2.17am – seemingly of their own volition. Oh, and they all attended the same class at the local junior school. Only teacher Justine (Julia Garner) and one pupil, Alex (Cary Christopher), are still accounted for. Among the townspeople outraged that the police have made no progress is construction boss Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), whose son Matthew is among the disappeared. Meanwhile, the boozy Justine is being hounded from all sides – intimidating telephone calls, graffiti on her car that reads 'witch' – as those in the community refuse to believe she has nothing to do with this eerie mystery. Advertisement Written and directed by Zach Cregger, who previously made the sly 2022 horror Barbarian, Weapons is reputedly inspired by Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, with its patchwork quilt of characters criss-crossing the San Fernando Valley.
