Weapons (Zach Cregger, 2025)

Incoming

First things first: Weapons is easily the best horror in 2025 to date, an ingeniously written inventively shot and staged film written and directed by Zach Cregger, whose debut feature Barbarian was also an inventive ingenious horror released in 2022. 

With that out of the way-- (WARNING: plot and surprise twists discussed in close and explicit detail!)

First thing that strikes you is the fairly unusual script-- not for Cregger the trope of the brave young woman caught in a perilous situation; in an interview he recounts how he had started with something similar in Barbarian (girl arrives late one stormy night at a Detroit airbnb only to find it already occupied by creepy young man) was immediately bored with the limited possibilities and wondered how he could change things up. His solution was both simple and radical: he brought in someone new. 

With Weapons Cregger ups the ante: Justine (Julia Garner) comes to class only to find all her students absent save Alex (Cary Christopher); the community is upset and blames Justine; she naturally feels motivated to find out what had happened, make sure Alex is all right. 

Cregger follows Justine's thread far as it goes then pivots to follow someone else's; the result is a tapestry capturing the mood and personality of a town, or a surprisingly wide sample of its citizenry. He's cited Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia with its multicharactered multinarrative script as inspiration but I submit the equally relevant influence is of all things Stanley Kubrick's The Killing-- in both films you see the clock wind back again and again to a previous event, you see an incident retold from differing points of view, you see gears mesh and whirr-- this time not to propel the mechanism of a tightly planned robbery but to force forward a haphazardly staged crime investigation. The lucky breaks, the unlucky accidents, the sometimes surreal way things can either come together or unravel-- Cregger hooks and drags you along, a flopping fish wanting to know not just what happened but how and why, arguably the most primal appeal of the art of storytelling. 

But it isn't just all about story; the characters also engage. Justine has the clenched-jaw look of someone who suffered a traumatic ache, is determined to prove the whole community wrong; Archer (Josh Brolin), business owner and father of one of the vanished, has the haunted look of someone who regrets not knowing what he had till it was taken from him (but still hasn't learned all the relevant lessons-- Cregger suggests that Archer's responsible for a sophomoric act of vandalism on Justine); Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) is a sadsack cop with an impulsively heavy fist who can't stay away from Justine (they meet for the odd hookup), can't stay away from trouble (he's also dating his superior's daughter); local dopehead James (Austin Abrams) is equally funny as professional leaf on a wind and Paul's occasional punching bag; Marcus (Benedict Wong) is amusingly beleaguered as Justin's school-principal boss who's constantly forced to step between her and the angry parents.

Cregger doesn't quite see his people as plot functions; each have their points of view, their varying predicaments, their sometimes foolish sometimes cruel ways of dealing with each other; we view them, we laugh at their absurdities (in an interview Cregger noted that when he tried to write a deliberate joke it fell flat but when he just let a character act according to their nature the humor was unforced and honest), we can't help but be invested in what might happen to them. 

The picture's far from perfect. I'd like to have seen a more grounded form of witchcraft, taking details from actual rituals-- but I suppose Cregger would open himself up to accusations of cultural appropriation or (worse) demonizing a niche sect (speaking strictly for myself if I were a member I'd love the publicity). The director strains credulity when he asks us to believe Alex can move around town unnoticed buying dozens of cans of soup, stretches credulity even further when the police don't dig deeper into Alex's family situation considering he's the only student left. I'd also note that while Cregger is deft at introducing and developing characters (even better I submit than ostensible role model Paul Thomas Anderson) he still hasn't mastered the knack of granting them a suitable exit-- Marcus in particular feels poorly served (Justine could at least pause a moment to mourn him, he seemed like a real if reluctant ally to her); same with Paul and James, who deserve to be in each others' arms, if not at each others' throats. 

The film does have its memorable imagery, an essential for good perhaps great horror-- mainly the way the kids flit into the night with arms spread like as someone pointed out winged sycamore seeds, or better yet like cruise missiles skimming their way to their preassigned target. I like the way sustained shots and unsettling staging and framing-- motionless figures in the dark glimpsed at from the top of a stair for example-- ratchet up the suspense. The film doesn't have as off-kilter quirky a style as Osgood Perkin's Longlegs-- the flavor of some of Perkins Jr.'s visual compositions still linger on the tongue-- but Cregger does show ability.    

As the crucial Gladys introduced late in the story (chillingly foreshadowed in one of Archer's dream sequence) Amy Madigan goes fullon batshit complete with caked makeup and Stephen King clown fright wig-- she's clearly channeling Ruth Gordon's Minnie Castevet in Rosemary's Baby but can't quite capture Gordon's sly sense of humor (ambitious noteworthy attempt, tho). I do think her ultimate fate is fully hilariously realized (and as for the complaint that the finale is more comedy than horror-- O come on: Sam Raimi, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, George Romero, Mario Bava, James Whale. Show a little intellectual flexibility!).

Maybe the core performance is Cary Christopher's Alex-- his story explains what's going on and if you don't fall for his character or feel his predicament the whole picture falls flat. I recognize Alex-- have worked with him or kids like him before, the youth who finds himself in over his head, forced due to circumstances to step up and act as surrogate parent to people he cares for, sometimes operating below the radar of society. Kids like Alex are amazing-- the strength the resilience they show-- but are victims too; the term we have for them are 'parentified children' and it's not a (how do you put it?) superpower but a sustained and painful trauma, with lasting consequences; kids aren't meant to be parents they're meant to be kids, to be as goofy as they need to be before sloughing it all off to assume the mantle of responsibility. Cregger to his credit doesn't cure everyone with a miraculous wave of the wand; some don't start speaking again till years after, others are permanently institutionalized-- but what happened to Alex you know from the look on his face will stay with him for the rest of his life. 

First published in Businessworld 8.15.25