Weapons Review (Film, 2025)

content warning: blood, gore, violence against women, foul language, alcohol use, drug use, grieving, medical footage, sexual content, child endangerment

Weapons is one of the most fascinating horror films to get a wide theatrical release in the United States in a very long time. Told from multiple perspectives in a small town, Weapons explores a disturbing concept in more ways than I imagined possible.

At 2:17 AM, 17 students from one classroom wake up, walk outside their houses, and run freely into the night. The next morning, their teacher walks into a classroom with only one student. No one can find the missing children and neither the teacher nor the one survivor can explain what happened. To go any further than the general concept of the film is to do the film a disservice.

Writer/director Zach Cregger (Barbarian) has carefully crafted a masterpiece of modern horror. Employing post-modern narrative techniques, references to recent history, and a dark sense of humor, Cregger transforms the tragedy of an entire classroom of students being lost all at once into a raucous crowd-pleasing epic. You never know if you're going to laugh, scream, or cry at what comes next.

One of the best elements of Weapons is its unconventional narrative structure. The film opens with an anonymous voiceover narration from a young girl, explaining that what you're about to watch happened to this town and no, no one can actually explain all the details. "One" is the key. The film follows the story from multiple perspectives, jumping back and forth in time as we see the events and fallout unfold from the perspective of the teacher, a grieving parent, a police officer, and others involved in the investigation.

For me, one of the most satisfying elements of the story is not knowing what really happened. The teacher, grieving the loss of the students and doing what she can to solve the mystery and save her reputation, has an entirely different perspective on the events than a parent, grieving the loss of their son and convinced that the teacher HAD to know something she wasn't revealing. Their place in the community impacts how they perceive and explore what's happening. A principal protecting the reputation of the school is going to view things differently than a police officer not assigned to the missing classroom case. The stories overlap, but the details blur together and even contradict each other as the story progresses. It's as fascinating as it is frustrating, ratcheting up the tension and making the slow drip of truth even more disturbing.

Weapons is currently playing in theaters.