FILM OF THE WEEK: Weapons - Reviewed by Roe mcDermott

Zach Cregger’s Weapons opens with so much eerie confidence that, for a while, it feels like something truly great.

The concept is irresistible: at precisely 2.17am, seventeen children from the same class wake up and walk out of their homes, arms outstretched, into the suburban dark, running out of view of any camera until they disappear. It’s an image that strikes like a match – odd, arresting, already iconic – and the sequence that follows is thick with mood, mystery and that rare kind of horror-film promise that anything could happen, and probably will. A child’s voice narrates, sweetly and ominously, setting the story up as something between a local legend and a modern parable. As George Harrison’s 'Beware of Darkness' swells on the soundtrack, it becomes clear that whatever Weapons is, it won’t be ordinary.

Cregger is a born mood conjurer – his camera glides with menace and his tone is confidently off-kilter. Like Osgood Perkins’ 2024 Longlegs, Weapons thrives on atmosphere. The comparisons go further: both films offer meticulously crafted openings, strikingly unsettling world-building and the promise of something psychologically shattering, only to later reveal something stranger and sillier. Where Longlegs gives us a bizarre villain who slightly deflated the dread, Weapons goes further, introducing a theatrical, camp antagonist whose late arrival will delight some and derail others. There’s a gallows-humour energy that kicks in around the midpoint, and while Cregger clearly relishes the tonal shift, it sends the film down a more cartoonish path, pulling focus away from the human horror it set up so well.

The story unfolds in chapters, each showing the same days or hours from different perspectives – a teacher (Julia Garner), a parent (Josh Brolin), a police officer (Alden Ehrenreich), a troubled teen (Austin Abrams), and others best left unspoiled. It’s a Rashomon-style structure that seems to promise a prismatic emotional complexity. While it’s cleverly constructed and delivers some satisfying plot mechanics, the effect is mostly aesthetic. Characters remain thin, serving the puzzle more than the plot, and the repetition doesn’t deepen the mystery so much as stretch it out. Still, the cast – especially Garner and Brolin – bring texture where they can, and the sense of being spun around in an elegant, escalating web keeps you engaged, if not always emotionally invested.

There are flashes of something weightier under the surface, and for a while it seems like the film is edging towards allegory. The town turning in on itself, the violence of fearful parents, a dream sequence involving a machine gun, and of course the image of a class of children disappearing without trace all hint at the shadow of school shootings, the terror of not knowing what your child might be exposed to, or what kind of world they are inheriting. But these echoes remain faint and unfulfilled, breadcrumbs rather than a path, and any political or emotional resonance is quickly overtaken by the story’s more outlandish twists and truly silly visual choices (some of which were spoiled in early trailers that are best avoided.)

Still, it’s hard to deny the film’s magnetism, while it lasts. Cregger has grown more ambitious since Barbarian, and in many ways Weapons is a better film. It's more confident, inventive and carefully composed. But for all its polish and promise, it still feels like a genre exercise in search of a centre, a film more interested in playing with structure and style than saying something lasting. By the time the climax arrives – gruesome, bizarre, darkly funny and occasionally slapstick – the haunting power of that first hour has mostly drained away. What began as a nightmare ends as a bit of a joke, and a particular choice about the resolution avoids a harrowing and complex reckoning that would have been far more intriguing.

For some, that might be the point: a nasty fairy tale with no moral, no safety net, no grappling. But for a film that seems to promise something bigger, stranger, and more profound, Weapon hits a little wide of the mark.

• Watch the trailer below: