Do you remember the last time you were alone in a place usually filled with people? Those seemingly out-of-place feelings of dread, isolation and surveillance that raise the hairs on the back of your neck define “Weapons,” the Oscar-winning 2025 horror film.
Written and directed by Zach Cregger, who you might recognize as the director of “Barbarian” (2022) and co-writer of the sketch comedy series “The Whitest Kids U’Know,” “Weapons” follows an ensemble cast of characters as they find themselves entangled in a mysterious disappearance.
The film begins with a disembodied childlike voice, whose identity is never directly revealed, narrating the opening scene with the basic details of the disappearances. This narrator imbues the story with a chilling, vulnerable feeling that is reminiscent of losing your parents in a store as a little kid. After the opening scene, we switch to the third grade teacher Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) perspective. This shift creates a somewhat jarring dissonance that primes us to think about how a child’s world functions in stark contrast to an adult’s.
When Justine Gandy arrives at her classroom on a typical Thursday morning, she finds that 17 of her 18 students have vanished without a trace. The only student present, sitting plainly in his seat with his eyes locked on the whiteboard, is Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher). Video footage from home surveillance systems reveals that all 17 missing children left their houses alone, seemingly of their own volition, at exactly 2:17 a.m.
“Weapons” follows a nonlinear narrative style, jumping from character to character, though still centering the interior lives of Justine and Alex to create a story that is almost as emotionally stirring as it is horrifying.
The film is split into chapters, each of which features one character in the ensemble cast. While some characters seem fitting for a plot related to disappearing children — Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), whose child has disappeared, and the school’s principal Marcus Miller (Benedict Wong) — others feel like the most unlikely figures to get caught up in a disappearance. Watching this movie, you’ll become uncomfortably aware of the six degrees of separation between yourself and others.
While each character brings their own complexities to the plot, I saw Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan) as the true core of the film’s horror, and critics agree. Madigan’s portrayal of Aunt Gladys — which toed the salt line between fragility and brutality — secured Magidan the Best Supporting Actress award in the Oscars.
The 75-year-old actress not only clinched an Oscar during an unpredictable and competitive year, but also broke a 55-year-old record for the longest time an individual actress has gone between Oscar nominations: 40 years, up from 39. Last month, Madigan appeared on the Oscars’ stage for the first time since 1985 (when she was nominated for Twice in a Lifetime). The second time in her life, however, Madigan went home with the “little gold guy,” as she described it to AP.
Madigan’s compelling performance alone isn’t enough to make “Weapons” crawl under your skin and linger in your dreams. Luckily, the haunting cinematographic choices create images that you just can’t shake: lipstick smeared over a mouth chalked in wrinkles; windows pasted over with newspapers, an eye peering through the gaps between pages; raindrops falling onto the camera, obscuring the figure making their way up an unsteady trellis.
Filled with moments of tension and mystery, a sense of humor also brings “Weapons” to life. The all-too-accurate care for elementary school rules over genuine concern for safety creates a hilarious friction between Principal Miller and Justine. Here, the unstable point of view also creates a thoughtful dissonance between Justine’s ambiguous grief over losing almost an entire classroom of children, and Miller deliberating over which cereal brand to buy.
The iconic opening scene of children running Naruto-style with their arms spread out initially made me feel like my moral compass had gone haywire while laughing at how strange and absurd the disappearance felt. However, later in “Weapons,” a series of plot twists transforms this same image into one of the most imposing of the whole film.
That sort of emotional trick is just what makes “Weapons” a movie to remember, both narratively and thematically. The plot renders seemingly everyday objects into weapons, hence the name of the film. Similarly, the blend between supernatural and psychological thrill destabilizes relationships between characters, transforming the trust we place in those we love into the most volatile, lethal weapon of all.
