There’s been buzz about Weapons for a while, hard to miss if you’re even remotely horror-adjacent. But does it live up to the hype?
2025 has been a cracking year for horror so far. I thought we’d peaked with Sinners earlier in the year, then came Bring Her Back and Together… horror fans have been absolutely spoiled. My only real worry now is how I’m going to pay for all these films when they hit physical media later this year.
The script for Weapons reportedly sparked a fierce bidding war, with Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions allegedly even severing ties with some of his team after losing out. Clearly, something in those pages had people excited. In the end, New Line Cinema secured it for a cool $38 million.
The marketing leaned into the uncanny, fronted by that unsettling CCTV footage of children sprinting into the night at exactly 02:17, arms raised just a bit too high. The image’s been compared to the infamous “Naruto run”—only… scary. There’s a Pied Piper vibe to it, that unnerving distortion of the familiar. Anyone who’s watched Attack on Titan will know all about just how uncomfortable it can feel when something runs a bit weird.
From there, the story unfolds in overlapping chapters, each told from a different perspective. All the missing children are from the same class, so we first see things through their teacher (and suspect number 1), Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), a teacher with a history of rule-breaking and obsessive behaviour. In this case, it helps. Then we move through the devastated parent, the conflicted police officer, and eventually the one child who didn’t vanish. It’s fragmented, disorienting, but it hooks you in.
I was surprised by the dark comedy running throughout Weapons. Not a “funny” film exactly, but the editing slips in sly jokes. There was one gag that outstayed its welcome, but the film impressed me in so many other ways that I didn’t mind. In fact, I’ve already seen it twice, and it held up both times.
Visually, Weapons makes daylight unsafe. Horror often hides in shadows, but here the fear is right out in the open—playgrounds, streets, kitchens. That supposed safety just makes everyone look more vulnerable. It reminded me of Smile, It Follows, and The Woman in the Yard, where the sun doesn’t save you, it just exposes you.
The moments that linger aren’t always the loudest ones. That image of children running with their arms raised too high is one that stays burned into your mind. Another, which I won’t spoil, involves Benedict Wong and a petrol station. If you know, you know. The scares are well crafted—yes, there are jump scares, but they never feel cheap. The film plays as much like a mystery as a horror, drip-feeding you just enough to keep you guessing. Beneath the shocks, the themes dig deeper: grief, paranoia, absent adults, media hysteria, and even the shadow of school-violence anxiety. It’s weighty stuff, but it never tips into preaching.
That said, the fragmented structure won’t be for everyone. Some viewers will find the pacing deliberate, the tonal shifts uneven, or the threads not tied up tightly enough. Personally, I think that ambiguity is part of its unsettling charm. As I said before this film is laid out very much like a mystery so it’s difficult to say too much about what happens without spoiling anything. What I will say is that I found the “why is this happening” very interesting and something of a surprise. Don’t go in there thinking you’ll come out with all of the answers as to what was going on and how—but the same is true of the majority of horror films, right? Weapons doesn’t spoon-feed you neat answers. It lingers, hanging in your head long after the credits. And that’s exactly the kind of afterglow I want from a horror film.
Weapons is bold, eerie, and emotionally resonant—one of the most imaginative horrors of 2025. Zach Cregger hasn’t just followed up Barbarian, he’s surpassed it, cementing himself as a modern voice in unsettling cinema.
Author: Ben, Marketing Department
