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Weapons ★★★ 

  • Writer: 2filmcritics
    2filmcritics
  • 6 minutes ago
  • 4 min read

Availability: Showing widely in theaters. No online availability at this time. Online purchase and rental expected in the Fall, including on HBO Max (because this is a Paramount production). See JustWatch here for future streaming options.


Do You Know Where Your Children Are?


At 2:17 a.m. on an ordinary school night, 17 third-grade students from one classroom in small town Maybrook, Pennsylvania, woke up, ran out their front doors, and disappeared into the dark. The 18th student, Alex Lilly, was the only one who showed up for class that day.


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Only Alex (Cary Christopher) showed up for class.


The script built around that event, by Zach Cregger (who also directed and produced), was the subject of a bidding war, won by Warner Bros. and lost by Jordan Peele, who must have been intrigued by its horror content—these days, the only dependable way to get young people into theaters. “Weapons” is promoted as a horror film, and there’s enough to justify that description: a woman living alone in a house, threatening sounds outside; a home whose windows are covered with newspapers; a basement that comes into play; and, significantly, body-horror—plenty of bodily fluids, humiliations and mutilations. You’ll relish some of the guts (and blood, of course), splintering doorways, and lots of smashed glass, in the way that the violent denouement of “Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood” (2019) had its admirers.

Still, it isn’t horror that makes Cregger’s (“Barbarian” 2022) latest film special, or at least very good.

Still, it isn’t horror that makes Cregger’s (“Barbarian” 2022) latest film special, or at least very good. All the main characters (even those who seem less than central) are carefully drawn and distinctive. The always watchable Julia Garner (TV’s “Ozark,” “The Assistant” [2020], “The Royal Hotel” [2023]) is perfect as the wired, low-affect, intrepid, strong (though not necessarily feminist) but imperfect Justine Gandy, teacher of the missing students, who tries to find out where they are at the same time that she is seen by some parents as implicated in their disappearance. One of those suspicious parents is Archer Graff (Josh Brolin, nicely not overplaying the role yet providing a welcome physical presence), an empiricist. Like Justine, he’s a detective of sorts, whose pursuit of evidence overcomes his initial suspicion of the teacher. Fortunately, no romance.


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Students and parents alike suspect the third-grade teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) of being implicated in her students' disappearance.


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James (Austin Adams) persists

in his hopped-up, homeless life,

even after being beaten up by a cop.


A couple of sad sacks, guys leading lives that aren’t what they imagined, round out the top 4. Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), an alcoholic policeman with a temperament problem (what else is new?) and the burden of being married to the police chief’s daughter, is having an affair with Justine. Homeless drug addict James (a riveting Austin Abrams, “The Walking Dead”), Paul’s on-street nemesis, is played as both the hopped-up, hapless, pitiable, brutalized victim and, in a late scene with Archer, for physical, Freddy’s-back type laughs. School principal Marcus Miller (Benjamin Wong) also has a dual role. Alex, a nice enough kid who is bullied at school, is one-dimensional and, as acted by Cary Christopher, somewhat impersonal—the director’s decision, one imagines. Amy Madigan ("Field of Dreams," 1989) is appropriately creepy and menacing as Alex’s androgynous “great aunt” Gladys.


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Amy Madigan has received accolades,

including from the director, for being appropriately creepy and menacing

as Alex's "Auntie" Gladys.








Cregger said that Madigan “saved” the movie, though given the excellence of the script and strong performances from all the major actors, that hardly seems likely. No one character—not Justine, not Archer, not Auntie—drives the plot or is at its center. Instead, the characters could be said to “fulfill” the plot, to inhabit it, each from his or her own position in the story, even while being unaware. Every character—the film is structured in segments, each featuring one of them—moves the story along in some way they can’t anticipate, caught up in something they don’t understand. They are integrated into the plot and also unknowingly involved with, and complicit with each other. Cregger accomplishes it all quite seamlessly.


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Josh Brolin doesn't overplay concerned parent Archer, who, with Justine, acts as a detective in plotting out the route of the children's disappearance.






The film’s success at the box office may also have something to do with its social relevance. Although hardly a “message” film, “Weapons” touches lightly on a variety of contemporary issues: school mass shootings (obliquely); a generation of hyper-anxious parents, who won’t let their 12-year-olds walk to the corner grocery for a carton of milk; the distrust of authority figures—here, the school principal and the chief of police; and the dysfunctional qualities of a small town (ala “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” [2017]), in which community all too easily succumbs to conflict and division. In Maybrook, the community turns against Justine, the non-conformist (she drinks too much, she sleeps with a married man), a woman who aggressively sticks up for herself.

“Weapons” (the inadequate title apparently refers to weaponizing people) has no meaningful “bad guy.”

Curiously, “Weapons” (the inadequate title apparently refers to weaponizing people) has no meaningful “bad guy.” Unlike the zombies in Ryan Coogler’s recent “Sinners,” the responsible party in “Weapons” doesn’t stand for anything. Given the obvious care with which Cregger assembled the script, that was probably intentional.


Not deep, but a master class in story-telling.

He says: We almost didn’t see “Weapons” because of its marketing as horror, which we find tedious. Fortunately, we did.


She says: Yet another horror film (sigh), although one that exploits other genres a bit too, specifically sci-fi, revenge, and action. It’s no “Sinners,” but it’s worth one’s time for the creative script and strong performances.

Date: 2025

Director: Zach Cregger

Starring: Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Benjamin Wong, Amy Madigan, Cary Christopher

Runtime: 128 minutes

Country: United States

Language: English

Other Awards: 1 nomination (for “Most Anticipated” film)

Phone: +1.716.353.3288

email: 2filmcritics@gmail.com

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