After making his name in the comedy world, writer/director Zach Cregger surprised many by making the highly effective horror comedy Barbarian in 2022. That success made his follow-up film much anticipated, and he’s surprising again with the much darker Weapons, a title that serves to intrigue even as it's only slightly less random than his previous effort.

The film’s inciting event is the disappearance of almost an entire classroom of third graders taught by Justine Gandy (Julia Garner). For an unknown reason, all of them except for Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher) ran out of their houses at 2:17 am one morning and vanished into thin air. Neither Justine nor Alex claims to know anything about the incident, which is viewed with skepticism by many parents, including Archer Graff (Josh Brolin).

Told in chapters focusing on different characters, the film methodically approaches the crisis from multiple angles, including deeper dives into side characters like Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), a police officer and Justine’s ex-boyfriend; Anthony (Austin Abrams), a drug addict who tries to find any way to feed his habit; and Andrew (Benedict Wong), the principal at Justine’s school.

The subject matter of the film inherently makes it deeper than Barbarian, as putting kids in peril is tough to take for many people, especially parents. Cregger shines a light on that stress through the character of Archer, whose obsession with finding out what happened to his son becomes monomaniacal. But by showing the audience stories involving other characters, especially the way Justine gets increasingly isolated, Cregger ensures that the film never becomes bogged down in sadness.

The diversity of storylines also serves the purpose of keeping the audience guessing as to where the overall story is heading. The strangeness of the kids’ disappearance and a few other odd things early on only hints at the answers that are to come. When Cregger finally decides to put the story into overdrive, it’s a gripping journey involving ultraviolence, bewildered characters, and one supremely creepy woman played by Amy Madigan.

The film gives cinephiles a lot to dig into with its variety of different shots. Cregger and cinematographer Larkin Seiple don’t do anything overly flashy aside from a couple of sequences without cuts. Instead, they subtly play with angles like approaching a doorknob from underneath or saving a scary reveal until just the right moment that ups the intensity of the film greatly. Jump scares are called upon a bit too often, but the rest of the movie is done so well that the trope can be forgiven.

Garner, so good in her Emmy-winning role on Ozark, does a fantastic job at carrying the emotional weight of the story. She’s aided by the always-reliable Brolin, whose character mostly acts as a counterweight to hers. Ehrenreich and Abrams are good, if slightly miscast. It’s great to see Wong outside of Marvel movies, and Madigan steals the movie in her late-breaking role. There’s also a fun cameo for fans of Barbarian.

There are a lot of different filmmakers who can churn out middling horror movies, but Cregger now joins someone like Jordan Peele in making consistently interesting films that also deliver the goods when it comes to scary stuff. Weapons jumps to the top of the list for 2025 horror movies, but it’s also just a great movie, period.

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Weapons opens in theaters on August 8.