Weapons: Don’t Be Scared. It Isn’t That Kind of Horror Movie
By Thom Ernst
Rating: A
I doubt our editor will see Weapons. On principle. What principle? A vague and mostly indefensible one — the kind that says, “I don’t do horror.” She’s not alone. The owner of the coffee shop I frequent doesn’t do horror. The woman I married? No horror. Many of my friends — most of them, in fact — don’t do horror.
Which makes Weapons exactly the kind of horror movie they should see.
Because Weapons, directed by Zach Cregger (Barbarian), is part of a new wave in genre filmmaking. I hesitate to call it “elevated horror.” The term isn’t entirely wrong, just a little self-congratulatory. Let’s just say these films are smart, stylish, often wickedly funny, and far more invested in existential dread, buried trauma, and social decay than in cheap jump scares.
Oh, and the story? Turns out that too matters. They belong in the same family as the work of Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and Ti West. You might even include Ryan Coogler’s Sinners for its genre-defying ambition. And though it’s early days yet. With his debut feature Together director Michael Shanks may soon earn a place among them.
It’s no accident that Cregger and Peele both come from comedy. Their films use humour like a hidden weapon — softening you up, teasing expectations, and then pulling the floorboards out from under you. Weapons plays that game beautifully. It’s sly, unpredictable, and paced like a mystery where each answer only leads to another door you shouldn’t open.
The less you know going in, the better. Truly. You’ll thank me. But here’s a taste: One night, at exactly 2:17 am, 17 elementary school children rise from their beds, walk silently through the streets — arms outstretched as though pretending to be airplanes — and vanish. That image alone is haunting, poetic, and hard to shake.
Suspicions quickly fall on the new teacher Justine (Julia Garner), who has a messy past and a taste for vodka tonics. Her biggest accuser is local builder Archer (Josh Brolin), whose son is among the missing.
The cast includes Alden Ehrenreich as a dangerously unstable cop, Benedict Wong as a principal trying to hold things together, and Austin Abrams as a homeless addict in a performance that might just change his career.
And if we're talking breakout performances, Cary Christopher earns his as Alex, the classroom’s lone survivor, delivering a quietly powerful range, from silent trauma to full-out action hero. Then there is Amy Madigan, nearly unrecognizable, in a role that evokes both Ruth Gordon’s Minnie (Rosemary’s Baby) and Robert Blake’s Mystery Man (Lost Highway).
Weapons borrows structure from Rashomon but feels like a cross between a Grimm fairytale and an exceptionally effective Twilight Zone episode. It’s a story steeped in grief and guilt, driven by mob mentality, and shadowed by themes of deceit, manipulation, power, and the cruel inevitability of chance and coincidence.
Yes, it’s a horror film. But not the kind you avoid because you don’t like being scared. This is horror by way of allegory, dark comedy, and slow-burn suspense. There are WTF moments, yes but they’re earned and often arrive in perfect sync with the characters’ confusion, which makes them all the more satisfying.
Cregger’s film is a standout — unsettling, odd, and wickedly fun. Weapons might just be the horror movie for people who don’t do horror.
But don’t let me spoil any more. Go in knowing as little as possible. Then come out wanting to talk.
I’ll be here.
Weapons. Directed by Zach Cregger. Starring Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Benedict Wong, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher and Amy Madigan. In theatres August 8.