Weapons isn’t a movie. It’s a jigsaw. Parts are assembled, even if the order doesn’t initially seem logical. The outline is revealed first, even if that leaves more questions than answers. Areas are filled in that leave you wondering how they connect to the whole. The solution is seen as much in the holes that remain as by the pieces in place. And right until the final piece is in place, even though you’ll have known what it looks like for quite a while, it’s a sneaky and sinister mystery.
Even the title of the second movie from Barbarian writer/director Zach Cregger seems like a complete non sequitur. What do weapons have to do with the sudden disappearance at 2:17am one random morning of 17 of the 18 kids from one class in a perfectly normal elementary school? Where did they go? And why did they all run in the same fashion, arms out, straight backed, into the night?
The pieces come together in chapter form, each titled from the character who they depict in most detail: Justine (Garner, The Fantastic Four: First Steps), the teacher with the empty classroom who is now a suspect; Archer (Brolin, Avengers: Endgame), the grieving father desperate to get his son back; Alex (Christopher), the timid boy who was left behind by this town’s version of the Pied Piper of Hamelin; Gladys (Madigan), the eccentric aunt who is now his guardian; Andrew (Wong, Doctor Strange), the school principal flapping over everyone’s emotional needs. They make all the sense in the world for this story. But what did minor figures like local homeless junkie James (Abrams) do to earn such narrative attention? The answer is twofold: to add depth to the characters and the nature of this small town, and to be revealed as their own narrative component. It’s like fiddling with those seemingly endless stretches of blue sky on a jigsaw: They may seem like filler at the time, but they become an essential part of the whole.
That whole is the solution to the mystery, and the mystery is perfect in both its enigmatic and revelatory phases. Cregger doesn’t make it immediately obvious what’s happening. (Aliens? Witchcraft? Weird science? Monsters under the bed? Pre-teen rebellion? An early morning Pokémon sale?) Instead, he shuffles the pieces for the audience and puts them together in a nonlinear fashion. Stories are told and retold from different perspectives – not in a haze of Rashomon-esque self-serving recollection, but to build out the picture.
There’s an X-Files meets Peyton Place vibe here, a suburban monster-of-the-week episode that spills out to feature length with witty scripting and tragic character development, all balanced by cunning shocks. Unlike so many of his horror contemporaries, Cregger understands that you can show and tell when it comes to frights. He uses broad daylight and dim shadows to equal effect, shifting seamlessly from gruesome violence to eerie scene-setting to jump scares (there’s also one repeated image that gets the audience every time, it’s that simple and unsettling). He understands that the viewer will work out what’s going on before the picture is complete, and so there’s a change in pace in the second hour. With the outline in place, he can concentrate on the details, taking the seeping tension of the first half and turning it into spooky chills. It’s a subtle shift but one that keeps the puzzle fascinating even when the audience thinks it’s got it solved.
All of this leads to what may be the most logically, emotionally, and narratively complete, and outright satisfying, resolution of the year. Weapons is such a deliriously twisted blast that, as soon as it’s complete, you’ll want to shake up the box and do it all again.
This article appears in August 8 • 2025.
