Though it’s been undeniably slacking in other genres, 2025 at the cinema has been a great one for horror, from the grand and epic scales of Sinners and 28 Years Later to the silly fun of Final Destination Bloodlines to the compellingly abject domestic misery of Bring Her Back. All this to say that it’s no mean feat that Zach Cregger’s Weapons is easily the best horror film of the year to date and, for that matter, the best film of any type I’ve seen in the last 8 months, the first true knockout of 2025; sweeping, mysterious, brilliantly acted, and just so much damn fun.
In one of the most instantly gripping premises of any recent film, Weapons opens the morning after a bizarre event – at 2:17 AM the night before, all but one of the children in a suburban 3rd Grade class left their houses and disappeared into the night. What follows is an interlocking maze of a movie as we see the aftermath through six different perspectives, including the children’s teacher Justine (Julia Garner), instantly under suspicion by the parents of this small suburban town, Archer (Josh Brolin), a dad looking for his lost son, and useless local cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich). To say too much about who else gets the spotlight might be spoiling a film that is an enormous joy to just unpack as you go but rest assured that Cregger does give all the answers you’ll want and need.
This central structural conceit might mean that a few of the core characters get drawn in relatively broad strokes, but the slow-burn beginning really sells the reality of a town in a bizarre, unconquerable crisis, aided immensely by the impeccable ensemble. For me, Brolin and Ehrenreich are the best of a great bunch, tragic and flawed and sometimes very funny, but everyone shines, with great moments for Austin Abrams as a tweaking petty thief, Cary Christopher as the one kid left behind, and Amy Madigan as a slowly-revealed monster at the core of it all.
From the off, Cregger conjures some powerfully frightening images – even the way the kids run away, arms outstretched like they’re pretending to fly, is deeply eerie. When they come out, the blood and violence are really gnarly (and sometimes even darkly funny; it’s great sharing confused fear-laughs with a packed audience), but only ever used to accentuate the dread and horror at the heart of things, no fountains of gore for their own sake. Cregger is clearly drawing from a lot of different, real horrors of modern America, perhaps foremost amongst them the constant spectre of school shootings, but Weapons never gets bogged down in being a metaphor for any one thing, its aim ultimately to scare and thrill ahead of being yet another horror story about ‘trauma’.
With any horror this high concept, the fear is the film backing itself into a corner that it can’t get a satisfying ending out of, but it’s in the final 30 minutes that Weapons truly distinguishes itself. Cregger doesn’t just stick the landing, he hits a 10/10 perfect dismount, every stylistic trick and story tic he’s established so far coming together for a magnificently breathless finale. It’s berserk, it’s cathartic, and it’s hilarious, and, when it comes to big screen entertainment, I can’t think of a better trio of things to be.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 