Weapons (18)
Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Julia Garner, Josh BrolinGenre: Horror
Author(s): Zach Cregger
Director: Zach Cregger
Release Date: 08/08/2025
Running Time: 128mins
Country: US
Year: 2025
At 2.17am, every child except one from the elementary school class of Justine Gandy gets out of bed, goes downstairs, opens the front door of their family home and runs out into the night, arms outstretched. None of the tykes are seen again. Distraught parent Archer Graff, whose son Matthew is among the missing, joins other members of the local community to try and make sense of the incident.
LondonNet Film Review
Weapons (18) Film Review from LondonNet
Zach Cregger, writer-director of the twisted 2022 home rental horror Barbarian, masterminds a tricky psychological thriller that should send a bead of cold sweat trickling down the spine of every parent. Ignorance is bliss in Weapons. This fiendishly constructed puzzle invites the audience to piece together evidence in real-time with beleaguered characters and is most skin-prickling when you have no idea what the finished picture should resemble…
Cregger’s elaborate design is a modern riff on the Brothers Grimm divided into six tantalising chapters, each told from the perspective of a protagonist embroiled in the mystery: a teacher, parent, child, school principal, police officer and petty criminal (though not necessarily in that order, to protect the film’s grand reveal). An insidious threat comes into focus in the final half hour with the formal introduction of a Machiavellian resident hidden in plain sight, accompanied by a powerhouse performance of unspoken anguish from nine-year-old Cary Christopher that builds in discomfiting intensity.
Strong bloody violence is par for the course in fairy tales: in Cinderella, the ugly stepsisters chop off parts of their feet to make the glass slipper fit. Weapons obliges with impeccably timed explosions of gloopy gore including a shocking three-hander in a sunlit kitchen that will test the stomach of anyone tucking into a concessions stand hot dog.
At 2.17am on a normal Wednesday, 17 children from the class of Maybrook Elementary School teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) get out of bed, go downstairs without waking their parents, open the front doors of their family homes and run into the night. Ring camera footage shows tykes sprinting merrily across front lawns and through their slumbering neighbourhoods, arms outstretched, never to be seen again. The only student from Ms Gandy’s class who remains safely in bed is Alex Lilly (Christopher).
Distraught parent Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), whose son Matthew is among the missing, joins the local community in pointing the finger of blame at Ms Gandy, demanding she confess her role in the unfolding tragedy. Justine pleads innocence and we gradually learn the truth through her eyes and from the intersecting points of view of her ex-boyfriend and local cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), school principal Marcus (Benedict Wong) and drug addict James (Austin Abrams) who overdoses on ghoulish misfortune.
Weapons is a stylish companion piece to Barbarian, expanding Cregger’s fascination with the darkness and depravity that fester unchecked behind the neatly mowed front yards of contemporary American suburbia. Overlapping chronologies deliciously tease the macabre storytelling of the final two chapters, which feel closely aligned to the hard-fought battles between good and evil that Stephen King regularly plays out in his fictional Maine communities. Suffer the little children, most grievously.
– Jo Planter
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London Cinemas Showing Weapons
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UK and Irish Cinemas Showing Weapons
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Showcase Cinema De Lux Bluewater
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