[SPOILER ALERT]. Trust me, just go into Weapons blind, and have a crazy fun time!
There are many ways a movie can be special. Sometimes it builds a world you’ve never seen or experienced before. Sometimes it repackages what has come before into something completely new and fresh. And sometimes it completely moves your body and soul from beginning to end. Like love, you might not be able to explain why a movie is special, you just know it. Hear me when I say this: Weapons is special, and I will do everything I can to help you experience that glorious feeling I did when I walked out of Zach Cregger’s masterpiece.
We start with an incredible hook: at 2:17 AM, Justine Grandy’s (Julia Garner) entire third grade glass ran out of their houses into the night…and vanished. After a month of investigation leads nowhere, Principal Andrew Marcus (Benedict Wong) is going to open the school again. Justine wants to teach to get her mind off this hell, but parents like Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) think she’s in on this, leaving her stuck at home. Alone. Like Archer: angry…and determined to get to the bottom of this horrific mystery.
Cregger lives up to the hype of his surprise first feature, Barbarian. He goes back to similar techniques he used in that to tell Weapons, specifically the slow unfurling of the story through character perspectives. After that chilling opening, Cregger takes us through various people in the town and follows them around for a few days, starting with Justine. It’s a brilliant stroke he should use everytime he writes a movie, because it not only dives us into the inner workings of one of the characters quickly, it also can tease a bunch of things he might use later on in the tale. Who paints the “WITCH” on Justine’s car? Why is she meeting with sober police officer (Alden Ehrenreich) in a bar? Why does she see one kid, Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher) with clown makeup in her dreams? We’re completely planted into Justine’s mind. Then Archer’s. Then Principal Andrew’s; you get the idea. We understand what’s making our characters tick, while also leaving each segment with more questions than answers. Each segment builds upon the last, painting Cregger’s demonic masterwork. Like an unholy cross between David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock, he plays our bones like a fiddle, contorting his story to the character at hand.
Oh, and there’s one other amazing thing Weapons does. Cregger finds this incredible tone for his movie. Yes, it’s a horror movie first: with all sorts of deeply unsettling images, action sequences, and jump scares, either fast, or horrifyingly slow. The last scene of Justine’s segment is the best scare of the year, with one great sound effect that made my whole audience gasp. But if the whole movie were pitched at that level, it would become exhausting and unsustainable. By grounding his movie with built characters, Cregger uses his devilish sense of humor (just like Barbarian) to wonderfully release the tension after it’s at it’s highest. Archer has one particularly gnarly dream, and after he wakes up, he shouts “WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?”, leading to one of the big laughs of the year. This means each segment takes on a new tone befitting the character at the center: some are angry, some are downright hilarious, some are legitimately frightening. I never knew at any point where the story was going until the very end, but I was along for the ride, ready to be taken somewhere I would become in touch with some pure primal feelings I can’t quite describe, but know only the most excellent of movies like Weapons could ever take me to.
By the time Zach Cregger’s movie ended, I could only exclaim “HELL YEAH!” and “HOLY SH*T”. I was ready to jump out of my seat, fly through the night like those psychotic children, and shout into the night how amazing Weapons is. But a 40 year old doing that would be arrested, so I took all that energy, came right home, and put it into the writing you’re reading/feeling right now. I hope you’re convinced! Now fly fly away to the nearest theater to see the best movie of 2025 so far!