Director – Zach Cregger – 2025 – US – Cert. 18 – 128m
****
One night, all but one of the children in one class in the town school disappear into the dark, leaving the townsfolk baffled as to what happened to them… – Fortean-sounding mystery is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 8th
One night at 2.17am, the 17 other kids in Alex’s class got up out of their beds, went downstairs, opened their front doors, and ran out into the night. As a child relates the incident, we observe it in flashback. The kids run with arms half outstretched at an angle, as if playing at being aeroplanes in the school playground. If you’ve seen the film’s poster, this strange angle of the arms is also apparent. As it also is in the film’s trailer, which starts with this flashback. But what is in the mind of these kids? Where are they going? To what purpose?
For that matter, why the title Weapons? I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that you’ll know the answer once you’ve seen the film.
Thus begins one of the most intriguing cinematic mysteries of recent years. To unpack his prologue, writer-director Cregger opts for an astute, six-part, character-based structure. Thus, in the first section, entitled Justine, part of the story is told from the point of view of the disappeared class’ teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), who one evening, following the disappearance, sits, nervously, in a meeting of the school authorities and the kids’ parents. The latter are confused and angry. The anger of their self-appointed spokesman Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) is palpable. He wants answers. He believes Justine knows what happened because, after all, the 17 kids disappeared from her class, not anyone else’s. Yet, what she gets up and addresses the meeting, she appears to be as confused about the incident as the parents on whose behalf Archer has spoken. She is ushered out of the building to her car by her boss Andrew (Benedict Wong) and others, determined to protect her from what is fast becoming an angry parental mob.
She drives not straight home as instructed, but calls by the liquor store to pick up some booze. Although she makes it from car to house without incident, she becomes convinced there is or are person or persons outside the house. After some time, a sudden frenzied banging on her door confirms this. The tension is palpable as she goes outside… The next day, she sees someone has graffiti’d the word ‘WITCH’ in red paint on the side of her car. Although Andrew at work warns her against any contact with Alex (Gary Christopher), the one remaining child from her former class who has now been put into another class, she can’t resist the compulsion to track the boy down and talk to him on the street. Alex, however, is smart enough to swiftly take control of the situation, and sees her off.
Unperturbed, she goes to look at Alex’s home. The windows have newspaper on them to keep away prying eyes. Something is off. There appear to be motionless people in the living room. In the evening, she invites Paul (Alden Erhenreich), a cop she knows, to a bar. He is absolutely not going to stay long. Next morning, he wakes in her bed. Fortunately for him, his wife is away on a trip.
The second section, entitled Archer, replays some of the parents’ school meeting from Archer’s point of view. The situation is having an adverse effect on the builders’ business he runs – he ordered the wrong coloured door paint and made one or two other mistakes. His son Matthew (Luke Speakman), flashbacks show us, used to bully his classmate Alex. Archer may not know this, and if he does, he doesn’t care. He has, however, poured obsessively over the security video of his son leaving the house at 2.17am that fateful morning. He can’t understand the strange position of his son’s arms as he runs. Used to having employees do what he asks, He tries to get the mother of one of the other vanished kids, whose house also has a security camera, to let him see the footage of her daughter leaving, only gaining access through her husband when he returns home.
He plots the trajectories of where the two children would have run to and notes where they cross. Still convinced Justine knows something she isn’t telling, he harasses her and it emerges that the point where the trajectories cross is not far from Alex’s house with the newspapers on the window.
The third section, entitled Paul, shows us something of the cop’s personal life: he is married to Donna (June Diane Raphael), the daughter of his boss the local police chief Ed Locke (Toby Huss), who phones to say her trip is being cut short, so the pair of them can get over to her dad’s do in a few days time, this coming Sunday, so can he let dad know? Out on patrol, Paul spots a young drifter (Austin Abrams) about to break and enter a property, and gives chase in his car, following the young man on foot, catching him, assaulting him, establishing the young man’s name to be James, then realising he left his patrol car’s dash cam on. This queers his pitch with his less-than-impressed father-in-law, but if no-one files a complaint for 30 days, the whole thing will just blow over.
That evening, Paul meets Justine in the bar and, after some small talk, he’s in bed with her at her house having frenzied sex. Later, his and James’ paths cross again when he sees the youth walking in the direction of the police station…
The fourth section, entitled James, shows us a snapshot of an outside, a drug addict who fences any goods he can to pay for his next fix. He traverses lines of parked cars in the street, checking the doors until he finds, say, a kids’ rucksack with a working tablet. He flees from, and is caught and beaten up by, pursuing cop Paul. Somehow, he finds his way to and breaks into Alex’s house, and sees some weird sights inside, but he doesn’t let these distract him from his main purpose, and he comes away with a lucrative haul of cutlery and other stuff. Then he sees a reward for information about the missing kids, and realises that he might have information that would get him the reward money. However, when he heads for the station, he is spotted by Paul…
By now, there have been quite a few unexpected surprises which I haven’t included in the above plot description. And there are more to come. One is a bizarre image of a giant rifle above a house, which clearly riffs off the title Weapons. As an enigmatic mystery, all this is at once puzzling and fascinating. Alas, as Cregger script starts to introduce his solution as to what’s going on, and locks it down in plot terms, the film start to lose its power. Up to now, it has veered between intense character study, interpersonal drama, and small town intrigue. Of quite what variety, one isn’t sure. Crime? Science Fiction? Fantasy? Horror? This ambiguity renders the proceedings all the more intriguing for the first hour or so. However, as the film locks itself down and effectively comes out as one of those genres, it loses that Fortean quality in favour of something much more obvious and hackneyed, which is a pity.
There are two more sections to come, the fifth one entitled Andrew, being based around that character and his dealings with Alex’s parents. Or, more accurately, because the couple been suddenly and inexplicably taken very ill, with his Great Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), who fortunately has been visiting and is able to look after them. She is a peculiar old bird, though, with smeared lipstick over her mouth and surrounding area ever so slightly reminiscent of the Joker in The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008).; and it’s only since she arrived that the windows of the family home have been covered with newspaper. Nevertheless, this section shows us something of Andrew’s domestic life – he lives happily with his spouse Terry (Clayton Farris). This section has quite a few surprises up its sleeve.
So too does the final section, but the revelations are coming thick and fast now, so best not to say too much about them. Not even about which character it is based around. The tone is wildly uneven, certain sequences eliciting much laughter from the audience in places (at least in the screening I attended). What I will say, is that I was reminded (by accident or design) of the prototype Ealing Comedy, Hue and Cry (Charles Crichton, 1947), which ends unforgettably with hordes of children swarming over London bombsites in pursuit of a criminal. Weapons, too, for very different reasons, has its own gang of kids relentlessly pursuing a human quarry.
Until everything is revealed, there is a real pleasure in trying to work out, alongside the characters, what the Hell is going on in this town. Most of those involved don’t manage to work it out in time to save themselves. There are plenty of red herrings to keep you guessing as to the real meaning of the enigma of the running children. It’s hard to single out any one cast member here, because there are half-a-dozen or so really striking performances. A number of scenes make highly effective use of quite dark cinematography to add to the overall atmosphere and unease.
And for good measure, writer-director Cregger throws in a number of dream (or rather, nightmare) sequences including among other things Alex the remaining boy in scary horror make-up and a person crawling across a ceiling; these just about work, tipping the piece away from compelling, Fortean enigma towards the more conventional horror genre. It very much feels like a Warner Bros. Picture, but unlike this year’s surprise unconventional big budget outing Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025), it seems to lose its edge about two-thirds of the way through. That said, it’s still an absolute must-see for those first two thirds. And the swarming kids at the end are fun.
Weapons is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, August 8th.
Trailer: