2025 has been quite the year for horror movies, with the likes of Sinners, 28 Years Later, and now Zach Cregger’s Weapons.
I remember the first piece of promotional material I saw for this film.
It was an over two-hour long video of security footage showing seventeen kids running from their homes and into the night, their arms spread out like airplanes, never to be seen again.
The footage creeped me out and made me wonder what the film would be like.
Then the first trailer floored me, along with most of the internet.
If anyone wants to know how to make a good horror movie trailer, I will point them to that first trailer.
It does an incredible job of building suspense for the film, without telling the audience what is going to happen. 

From there, I became obsessed, watching every piece of promotional material I could find about this movie.
Now, after months of waiting, I have finally seen Weapons.
Did it live up to the hype?
Well, yes, but, much like 28 Years Later, not in the way I thought it would.
The trailers made this movie look horrifying and, while I would argue that a lot of it is still pretty disturbing, Weapons is also much funnier than I expected.
I was anticipating some humor.
After all, Zach Creggor’s previous horror film, Barbarian, had a lot of comedy.
But even I was surprised by the amount of humor in this movie.
This is certainly not a bad thing because a lot of the humor is very good. 

But I am getting ahead of myself.
As I said earlier, Weapons centers around the events following the disappearance of seventeen kids from the same classroom.
The film divides itself into various chapters, depicting different characters’ reactions to the tragedy.
We follow the kids’ teacher Justine (Julia Garner), grieving father Archer (Josh Brolin), police officer Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), drug addict James (Austin Abrams), school principal Marcus (Benedict Wong), and Alex (Cary Christopher), the only kid in the class who did not go missing.

Each chapter, with one exception, uncovers part of the mystery, building up to where the storylines collide in an intense and highly cathartic climax.
Seriously, the ending is incredibly satisfying.
It got a lot of laughs and cheers in my theatre, along with quite a few groans of disgust.
The ending mixes perfectly with Weapons’ blend of horror and comedy.
There were quite a few jump scares which got me good, and plenty of unnerving scenes, supported by great cinematography.
What helps sell the horror and humor are the actor’s performances.
If I had to choose who my favorites were, I would say Austin Abrams is fantastic as James, and Amy Madigan may just steal the whole thing with her performance.

That being said, what about the ultimate explanation of why the kids went missing?
Is that satisfying?
For me, it definitely was, but I can see this being a swing and a miss for some viewers.
Another potential issue is that there is some imagery that seems to be there solely for symbolism’s sake, rather than tying into the actual plot.
This may cause some to wonder what the point of these things happening are in the story.
However, although I could see these being issues for others, they were not for me.
Personally, my biggest problem with Weapons is that one of the chapters, the one centering around Paul, did not really seem necessary.
It felt like Justine and James’ chapters explained everything there was to know about him, and his chapter did not have anything to do with the mystery like the other characters.

That being said, I certainly did not hate his chapter.
It just felt like if you removed it, very little in the plot would change.
Paul would still end up where he needed to be for the climax.
Other than that, though, Weapons is a blast.
It has fun jump scares, creepy imagery, great performances, and an ending which mixes comedy and horror excellently.
As a certain character says in this movie, “Are you watching?”