Weapons (2025 film)

Weapons
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Zach Cregger
Written by	Zach Cregger
Produced by	Zach Cregger Roy Lee Miri Yoon J. D. Lifshitz Raphael Margules
Starring	Josh Brolin Julia Garner Cary Christopher Alden Ehrenreich Austin Abrams Benedict Wong Amy Madigan
Cinematography	Larkin Seiple
Edited by	Joe Murphy
Music by	Ryan Holladay Hays Holladay Zach Cregger
Production companies	New Line Cinema Subconscious Vertigo Entertainment BoulderLight Pictures
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release dates	August 6, 2025 (2025-08-06) (Philippines) August 8, 2025 (2025-08-08) (United States)
Running time	128 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$38 million[2]

Weapons is a 2025 American mystery horror film written, produced, and directed by Zach Cregger. The film stars Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Cary Christopher, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan. Its plot follows the mysterious case of seventeen children from the same classroom who mysteriously run away on the same night, having been apparently abducted by an unseen force.

Weapons was first released in the Philippines on August 6, 2025, and was then released in the United States by Warner Bros. Pictures on August 8, 2025. The film was acclaimed by critics, with particular praise for Cregger’s direction and screenplay, as well as the cinematography, score and performances of the cast.

At 2:17 A.M. in Maybrook, Pennsylvania, 17 children from the same class simultaneously leave their homes and vanish. Their teacher, Justine Gandy, arrives in the morning to find only one student, Alex Lilly, present in the classroom. A police investigation is launched. Alex and Justine are interviewed, but nothing is found in the investigation or questioning.

The school principal, Andrew Marcus, places Justine on leave as she is ostracized by the wider community. Depressed, she resorts to alcoholism while resuming her on-off relationship with ex-boyfriend and married police officer Paul Morgan. Justine also experiences nightmares about the missing children and a strange woman. Concerned about Alex's wellbeing, Justine follows him home, and notices the windows have been covered in newspapers; peering through one, she witnesses Alex's parents seated in a daze. She insists that Marcus perform a wellness check. While Justine is asleep in her car outside Alex's house, a woman exits the house and cuts off a lock of Justine's hair.

Meanwhile, Archer Graff, the father of one of the missing children, struggles to cope after his son's disappearance and has similar nightmares to Justine. Frustrated by the ineffective police investigation, Archer decides to look into the case himself. He notices the missing children were running in the same general direction, but is unable to figure out a specific location. While confronting Justine at a gas station, a blood-covered, frenzied Marcus suddenly attacks her, but is subdued by Archer.

Earlier, Paul had a run-in with James, a local drug addict and burglar. Paul assaults James after being poked by a needle during a search and orders him to leave town. Stressed over the potential backlash if James makes a complaint, Paul spirals. Justine convinces him to break his sobriety, and he has an extramarital one-night stand with her. Following the assault, James breaks into Alex's house, believing it has been abandoned. Inside, he witnesses Alex's parents in a trance-like state and finds the missing children in the basement. He goes to the police with his information to get a cash reward. Paul spots James approaching the police station and gives chase. James flees into the woods, where he spots the woman from Justine and Archer's dreams. Paul catches up with James and drives them to Alex's house, leaving James in the car while he enters. Hours later, James is dragged into the house by a possessed Paul.

Marcus is visited by Alex's "aunt", Gladys, who claims that his parents are ill and that she is now caring for the family. Later, Gladys visits Marcus and his husband, Terry, at their home. Performing a ritual, Gladys possesses Marcus and has him kill Terry before sending him after Justine. Marcus attacks Justine at the gas station. She flees in her car after Archer fends off Marcus, and Marcus is fatally struck by another car while chasing her. Justine and Archer reconcile and realize the children were moving in the direction of Alex's house.

Flashbacks show Alex and his loving parents welcoming the severely ill Gladys to their home. Alex notices a strange potted tree in Gladys's room. Returning home from school one day, Alex encounters a rejuvenated Gladys and his parents, who are in a trance. Gladys threatens to kill his parents if Alex ever tells anyone about her. Alex witnesses Gladys performing witchcraft and rituals with the tree and is tasked with feeding his parents. When Gladys begins to fall ill again, she requests Alex's help to gather a personal item from each of his classmates, so she can possess them too. Alex agrees, hoping she will leave everyone alone once she gets better. The next night, she summons the children to Alex's home using their tray labels which Alex stole from the school classroom, as well as the Valentine's Day cards that they gave Alex. Alex later returns home from school to encounter a possessed Paul and James.

Both Justine and Archer visit Alex's house, where Paul and James attack them. Meanwhile, Alex is pursued by his parents after disobeying Gladys. Justine shoots Paul and James dead with Paul's gun. After escaping into Gladys's room, Alex copies the ritual he watched Gladys perform, using a lock of her hair. Gladys' control over the children breaks as she becomes their target. Following a frenzied chase through several homes, the escaped children finally catch up to her and tear her apart. With Gladys' death, the spell is broken and Archer rushes to reunite with his son.

A voiceover reveals that the victims were left catatonic from their possession; Alex's parents were institutionalized, while Alex went to live with a kinder aunt. The children are returned to their respective families, and some of them eventually became able to speak again.

• Josh Brolin as Archer Graff, the father of Matthew, one of the missing children.^[3]
• Julia Garner as Justine Gandy, a teacher who finds that all but one of the students in her class has vanished.^[3]
• Cary Christopher as Alex Lilly, the only child from Justine's class who did not disappear.
• Alden Ehrenreich as Paul Morgan, a police officer who has a complicated relationship with Justine.^[3]
• Austin Abrams as James^[a], a homeless drug addict and burglar.
• Benedict Wong as Andrew Marcus, the school principal.
• Amy Madigan as Gladys Lilly, Alex's greataunt.
• Toby Huss as Ed Locke, the police captain and Donna's father.
• June Diane Raphael as Donna Morgan, Paul's wife.
• Whitmer Thomas as Mr. Lilly, Alex's father.
• Callie Schuttera as Mrs. Lilly, Alex's mother.
• Clayton Farris as Terry Marcus, Marcus's husband.
• Luke Speakman as Matthew Graff, Archer's son and one of Justine's missing students.
• Scarlett Sher as the child narrator of the film.

After the financial and critical success of his film Barbarian (2022), Zach Cregger began work on a new spec script titled Weapons. It has been described as a "horror epic" with a more "personal story" for the filmmaker, partly inspired by Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia (1999).^[3] Cregger was inspired to write the screenplay after the death of his close friend and collaborator, Trevor Moore.^[4][5] The screenplay entered the market on January 22, 2023, and prompted a bidding war among Netflix, New Line Cinema, TriStar Pictures and Universal Pictures.^[6][7] New Line secured the rights within 24 hours after offering $38 million to cover all costs, including production and salaries, with Cregger receiving $10 million as writer, director, and producer and final cut privilege (pending test screening reactions to the film) in addition to a guaranteed theatrical release.^[6] Universal offered $7 million less than Warner Brothers.^[8] Jordan Peele, whose company Monkeypaw Productions participated in the bidding war in conjunction with Universal, parted ways with longtime managers Joel Zadak and Peter Principato, the latter of whom was also Cregger's manager, after losing the auction.^[9]

Between May and July 2023, Pedro Pascal, Renate Reinsve, Brian Tyree Henry, Austin Abrams, Tom Burke, and June Diane Raphael were cast in the film.^[10][11][12] However, as a result of production delays and the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes, Pascal, Reinsve, Henry, and Burke had to drop out of the film due to scheduling conflicts;^[13] Pascal, in particular, had to exit the film for running against his commitment with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025).

In February 2024, Josh Brolin joined the cast to replace Pascal.^[14] In April, Julia Garner (replacing Reinsve) and Alden Ehrenreich (replacing Burke) joined the cast.^[15][16] In May, Benedict Wong (replacing Henry), Amy Madigan and Cary Christopher were announced to have joined the cast.^[17][18] Principal photography was scheduled to begin in Atlanta in May 2024.^[15]

The soundtrack to Weapons was released by Warner Records on August 1, 2025. The soundtrack contains 36 tracks composed by Ryan Holladay, Hays Holladay, and the director Zach Cregger.^[19][20]

Weapons premiered in Los Angeles on July 31, 2025, prior to being released in the Philippines on August 6, 2025, and in the United States on August 8, 2025.^[21] It was originally scheduled to be released on January 16, 2026.^[22]

In the United States and Canada, Weapons will be released alongside Freakier Friday and Sketch, and is projected to gross $25–40 million from 3,200 theaters in its opening weekend.^[8][23]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of 161 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Zach Cregger spins an expertly crafted yarn of terrifying mystery and thrilling intrigue in Weapons, a sophomore triumph that solidifies his status as a master of horror."^[24] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[25]

Empire's John Nugent gave the film a perfect 5 stars out of 5 rating, and wrote, "The entire film, in fact, is something that shouldn't work, but does. Can a film about missing children and grief be called a crowd-pleaser? In Zach Cregger's hands, it feels almost effortless."^[26] Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film 3.8 stars out of 4, calling it superior follow-up to Barbarian while stating, "One of the greatest strengths of Cregger's ambitious script is its abject refusal to connect every dot in the manner that so much "elevated horror" has done in recent years. Still, it's not overly difficult to read the inciting incident of Weapons as a school shooting allegory."^[27] Variety's Peter Debruge praised the film, and wrote, "Regardless of how you feel about the bittersweet ending (and many will happily embrace the movie's darkly comic bittersweet finale), Cregger has achieved something remarkable here, crafting a cruel and twisted bedtime story of the sort the Brothers Grimm might have spun — not the kid-friendly Disney version, mind you, but the kind where characters kill on command and audiences find it difficult to sleep afterward."^[28] Tim Grierson of Screen Daily noted that "Cregger does terrific work answering the riddles he has teased throughout the runtime" while further stating, "Weapons gracefully balances its different tensions, all of them cathartically released during the superbly orchestrated, graphically violent final 20 minutes."^[29]

Tom Jorgensen of IGN gave the film score of 9 out of 10 and wrote, "Weapons is a righteous, fully actualized genre-bender in which writer-director Zach Cregger hones Barbarian's blend of unbearable tension and dark humor to a new level of razor-sharpness."^[30] Mark Kennedy of Associated Press awarded the film with 4.5 stars out of 5, and wrote, "If Barbarian came out of left field three years ago and heralded an exciting new voice in filmmaking, Weapons doesn't disappoint but it doesn't have the advantage of surprise."^[31]

William Bibbiani of TheWrap gave a less positive review, finding the film's resolution "a lot less frightening, and a lot more contrived, than it would have had [Cregger] not invited us to ponder more powerful possibilities for over an hour before tipping his hand." He nevertheless praised the cast, particularly Brolin and Garner, for doing "difficult, layered work", and the cinematography for "find[ing] the eeriest camera angle in damn near every scene, whether it’s overtly shocking or insidiously banal."^[32]

• Weapons at IMDb