'Weapons' Review: A Masterful Tapestry of Grief, Precision, And Terror

HOLLYWOOD, CA — Doors vanish. Clocks tick backwards. A playground blinks in and out of an eerie haze. Zach Cregger's mystery horror “Weapons” entangles as much as it hypnotizes, carving unease from the cracks of distorted reality. It thrives on ambiguity, coaxing viewers to piece together a shattered puzzle stitched from trauma, innocence and imagination turned against itself.

It’s a bold narrative experiment — an unorthodox, fractured structure that shifts protagonist to protagonist, each revealing only fragments of a buried truth. The result is an uncanny collage of emotion and perception... and somehow, it holds.

The film opens with a month-old mystery that’s shaken the quiet town of Maybrook. One fateful night, seventeen third-graders vanished into darkness. Only one child didn't — Alex (Cary Christopher).

No notes. No struggle. No signs of abduction.

Just doorbell footage: children sprinting into darkness, arms bent unnaturally, pulled by something unseen.

Their beloved teacher, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), becomes the focal point — a woman with a chilling past the town never dared to name until now. As she hunts for truth, others spiral into the mystery: Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), a grief-stricken father consumed by obsession; Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), a wary cop whose ties to Gandy conceal darker truths; school Principal Marcus (Benedict Wong), scrambling to preserve control; and James, a young addict (Austin Abrams), drifting deeper into chaos.

Cregger shapes “Weapons” into a fractured tale of grief and obsession, channeling the audacious narrative zigzags and ensemble intricacy of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia.” The story segments aren't dangling strands — they’re puzzle pieces, each character holding part of the answer. And the storytelling resists linearity with the same playfulness Cregger embraced in his debut, “Barbarian.” Expect to be guessing, squirming and checking IMDB just to make sure you’re still watching the same movie.

The tragedy exposes psychological fault lines in each protagonist, scarred by the disappearances. Garner imbues Justine with brittle bravado, shifting between guilt and resilience. Brolin's Archer comes across as bold and fiery, while Ehrenreich’s Paul blurs the line between protector and suspect.

Then there’s Wong’s Principal Marcus, struggling to maintain a sense of crumbling control. Meanwhile, Abrams’ addict spirals with quiet desperation, and Christopher’s Alex carries a haunted stillness, pulsing between silence and hollow stares.

“Weapons” blends elegance with sheer dread, crafting a horror experience that swings between jaw-dropping brutality and eerie quiet. Working alongside cinematographer Larkin Seiple and editor Joe Murphy, Cregger orchestrates a masterclass in atmospheric terror.

The result? A film that's brutally mesmerizing — hypnotic in its visuals, jarring in its emotions — where haunting direction, moody imagery, and editing precision converge to unnerve and dazzle. Their combined vision creates a unified experience that’s both striking and unsettling.

Suffice to say, while “Weapons” brims with style and tension, there are moments when atmosphere eclipses narrative a bit — particularly in its middle stretch, where pacing stalls and emotions blur. Yet even then, Cregger’s command of tone anchors the film in focused, unrelenting unease. And when the finale arrives — wondrous, warped, and wickedly satisfying — it detonates everything that came before.

If atmosphere were a weapon, Cregger doesn’t just wield it with lethal precision — he detonates it.