Movie Review: Weapons (2025)

I’m a big horror buff. When multiple people recommend a movie, I make a point to see it especially if it's from a director I like (Zach Cregger). I really enjoyed Barbarian, so I went into Weapons with high expectations. Unfortunately, it just didn’t hit the mark for me.

Rating: 4/10

IMDB Plot Description

When all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.

Spoilers & My Review Ahead

The premise is chilling: kids quietly leaving their homes in the middle of the night, never to be found. Any parent would find that terrifying. But unfortunately for Weapons, the movie skips over that moment and starts after it happens. Why brush past the scariest part? I’m just not sure.

So the story focuses on the aftermath. Justine, the kids’ elementary school teacher, becomes the main character. She is blamed for the missing kids and can’t seem to help herself, constantly crossing professional and personal boundaries to interact with Alex, the lone remaining child.

Multiple perspectives are meant to add layers, which is fun in theory, but for me, it didn’t land. The highlight was the witch character: bright with clown-like makeup, turning the traditional witch stereotype on its head. But even she felt underdeveloped. The explanation for her actions was minimal: she takes over Alex’s parents (and then his classmates) for strength, needs him to feed them all soup (LOL), and that’s sort of it. No backstory, no deeper reason. I don’t need everything spoon-fed in a horror film, but Weapons felt like it needed more time building her up. A few scenes to truly make the scenario terrifying would’ve gone a long way.

We had a really great jump scare with Josh Brolin dreaming of the orange witch in his missing son’s bed. We needed MORE of that throughout the whole movie. It was so unexpected I almost dropped my popcorn.

It’s cool to have a split tone to your movie, shifting between scary and funny. Barbarian knocked it out of the park when it came to tone-switching, but Weapons? It just felt goofy to me, and cheapened what could’ve been very compelling about this movie: kids disappearing with no trace.

As a side-note, the cop guy… Cheating on his girl & awful at his job? Pretty much deserved the needle jabs.

Ultra spoiler: Alex can also use the thorned stick to cast spells, saving everyone. Fine twist, but a little odd. Took a lot of the witch’s “power” and “scariness” away.

Overall, the pieces were there. Good characterization, unique story, solid dialogue, but the plot skipped over the most terrifying moments, and the rest felt cobbled together.

I appreciate what they were trying to do, but it felt unfocused and boring. Womp, womp!

Better luck next time, Cregger. You can probably ride off of Companion & Barbarian for a few years at least.

Thanks for reading!