Weapons Review

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. Our reviewer thinks the central mystery unfolds in a fascinatingly layered way that gives every character a chance to shine, and that decision to break their stories up into multiple, time‑scrambling chapters is both wise and creates multiple cliffhangers that set up a shattering finale. Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, and Alden Ehrenreich lead a cast whose fine‑tuned performances all align with and support Cregger’s delicate, film‑long balancing act. In Weapons, all but one student in teacher Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) class leaves their home at precisely 2:17 one morning, never to return. Naturally, all eyes in the small town of Maybrook – particularly those of grieving father Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) – turn to Justine, though the truth of the kids’ disappearance ultimately proves stranger (and scarier) than they, local cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), or school principal Marcus (Benedict Wong) could ever imagine. In IGN’s Weapons review, we discuss the movie’s tension‑ratcheting construction, the scene‑stealing turns from Austin Abrams and Cary Christopher, and how Zach Cregger’s follow‑up to Barbarian builds from and improves on the strong foundation the Whitest Kids U’Know member established in his first horror movie.