Scott Peak Photography
Jack Wilson
In 2022, writer and director Zach Cregger released surprise hit “Barbarian,” putting him on the radar of bigger studios. Fast forward to 2025 and Cregger’s second feature, “Weapons” has just hit theaters. The film follows seven different characters as they search to discover who, or what, made all but one child from a third grade classroom go missing.
The movie, which critics are calling a mixture of “Magnolia” and “Hereditary,” delivers an exciting two hours that anyone who enjoys movies should see. I expected a horror-filled, terrifying experience that would leave me up at night, but the movie also happens to be one of the funniest I’ve seen this year.
“Weapons” ends up being a delightful collection of genres including horror, comedy and mystery. The film’s pacing is also unique in that six of the main characters have 10–20 minute segments devoted to them, and by the end they all cross over in a phenomenal, hilarious ending.
If you decide to watch “Weapons,”I highly recommend going to as full a theater you can find, it’s a memorable experience.
All the performances are great, and you can tell everyone is having fun in their roles, but no character has long enough of a segment to really dive into them. The movie has a fast pace, so one can’t stop to think about certain scenes or worry too much about the characters because in just a few short minutes, you’ll be focused on a different one.
The standout performance of the movie, however, is Amy Madigan (Field of Dreams). She can be funny, threatening, all out terrifying and is without a doubt the best part of the movie.
In interviews for “Weapons,” Cregger cited “The Shining” and “Prisoners” as major inspirations for the movie: the signature Shining trick of tracking shots and the inspiration of Prisoners’s cloudy, drowsy atmosphere. Other than the cinematography, there aren’t any additional production highlights the side of Cregger’s writing and direction, but nothing falls flat.
Overall, “Weapons” is a phenomenal second outing for Zach Cregger. He’s improved exponentially from “Barbarian,” but with a much bigger scale, he tends to lose some of his characters in the plot.
Thanks to performances like that of Amy Madigan, however, this movie runs towards a phenomenal ending that will leave you thinking long after leaving the theater. Whether you’re a die-hard horror fan or you hate being scared, I highly recommend watching “Weapons” and seeing another great original film of 2025.