The director of Barbarian brings us another scary-as-hell, deeply unsettling horror film—this time about an entire classroom of children that goes missing in the middle of the night
Zach Cregger of Barbarian fame has a new movie out, and I purposely went into it not knowing a single thing about it. Over the past few weeks, I was goaded on by several friends-of-friends in the Atlanta film industry who kept hyping it up. Fun fact: Tons of things are filmed in Georgia because of generous tax benefits, so you'll often see movie set signs around town on any given day.
If you've seen Barbarian, you probably know what you're in for with a Cregger film, and if you haven't seen it, let's be honest: Weapons—in all its gory, stomach-churning, and dread-inducing glory—probably isn't on your radar.
Still reading? Okay, good. It's just us horror besties now. And if other folks are still here, I'll try my damndest to convince you to see it.
The premise is simple: One night, at 2:17 a.m., 17 children from the same elementary school class run out of their respective houses and vanish into the night without a trace. Their parents are distraught, the community is reeling, and the teacher and sole surviving student are questioned thoroughly. Is it aliens? Is it a monster? The absolute seeming impossibility of something like this happening is what gets you hooked.
This is where things get a little interesting for your average horror movie. Instead of the usual flow of spooky events → big bad reveal → thrilling denouement, Cregger breaks up the narrative into character-focused chunks. He's mentioned in interviews he was inspired by the fragmented storytelling in Paul Thomas Anderson's epic film Magnolia and Jennifer Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad.
Everything's connected, of course, and each vignette brings you closer to understanding what's really going on, all without spoiling it too early. It's a fine line to toe, but Cregger manages to balance everything for the first two-thirds of the movie. Up until the final act, it actually feels less like a horror film and more like a thriller/procedural. You can tell something is definitely not right in this town, but there are only tiny glimpses of supernatural things—and maybe even those are red herrings. If nothing else, this film is a testament to the importance of locking your car doors (the haircut scene in the front seat gave me chills).
Everything changes, though, when we meet Gladys. Gladys, the 2025 Longlegs-esque villain that I guarantee will be all over DragonCon and Halloween costumes this year.
I love an old evil crone stereotype, and with Gladys, we get it in spades. From the chopped-up Chappell Roan wig and lipstick-smeared-around-the-lips grin to the bald horror of seeing her wigless, she's frightening. And the best part? Gladys is played by Amy Madigan, who you probably recognize from Uncle Buck and Field of Dreams.
With her arrival, we also get the backstory to why all the children disappeared, and it's absolutely wicked. Alex, the only boy who didn't disappear from his class, lives with his perfectly normal parents. One day, he finds out that his great-aunt Gladys will be coming to stay with his family. Very quickly, she hypnotizes the parents so they're in a trance, with Alex forced to feed them soup to keep them alive. This sounds weird, but the way it's depicted on screen is absolutely terrifying.
Turns out, Gladys is some sort of witch, and she was trying to steal the mother and father's energy to regain her youth. Or heal herself. It's not 100% clear.
When that doesn't work, she realizes she needs the big guns, so she dispatches Alex to collect talismans from the kids in his class. At 2:17 a.m. that night, they exit their homes and make their way straight to the basement, where Alex is forced to feed them soup as well. The best performance in this movie is actually this little boy being forced to deal with inhuman levels of evil while keeping a perfect poker face for both the school and his enemy/great-aunt/kidnapper Gladys.
It becomes apparent that it's a classic witch-stealing-the-youth-and-vigor-from-little-kids trope, but the twist is in how she does it. She can literally turn people into weapons, heat-seeking creatures who can attack other people until they drop dead. She can also get them to hurt themselves, as we see numerous times with various sharp objects that make you cringe.
Weapons' climax is where folks will lock in. It's easily one of the most bananas endings I've seen in a long time in a theater, and it was clear everyone else in the theater felt the same way.
Alex manages to outsmart Gladys and uses her black magic against her, resulting in the 17 missing kids breaking out of the basement and racing after her through the houses and backyards of their neighborhood. The chase is chaotic, intense, and incredibly violent—it is also clearly inspired by the chase scene in Point Break with the surfer gang. (I definitely wasn't expecting this movie to reference a Keanu Reeves flick when I walked in.)
The film ends with the 17 tiny children mobbing the evil Gladys and physically ripping her to shreds in a few seconds of gore that made my stomach turn. To be fair, she deserved it. But I can't stop thinking about the extra trauma these kidnapped kids now have on top of being placed in a trance and trapped in a basement for weeks.
While reading about other people's takes on Weapons, I noticed some are leaning into it as a metaphor for school shootings, and how when kids die, the community looks to place blame somewhere. In the film, the community becomes enraged at the children's teacher, assuming she planted the seed of their disappearance and is hiding what actually happened.
I don't think it's that deep. I think it's the tale of collateral damage around a horrific supernatural force hell-bent on saving her own life at any cost. Personally, that's the way I like my horror movies.
Also, the scene with the potato peeler is going to be etched in my brain forever.
Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.
Bonuses: Julia Garner from Ozark is fantastic as the school teacher; watching possessed kids bomb Naruto runs in the middle of the night was a little hilarious.
POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.
