I walked out of Weapons feeling like I had watched two completely different movies. The first 15 minutes had me hooked, which is one of the scariest opening scenes I've seen in years. Julia Garner and Josh Brolin both give great performances, in what starts as a creepy story about an unexplained tragedy. But by the time we get to the witch hunt ending, I couldn't help but feel let down. The movie gives up on its best mystery and replaces it with supernatural answers that just aren't as scary as the original questions.
Weapons (2025) is not a true story. Director Zach Cregger made up the supernatural mystery about seventeen missing children and witchcraft as a way to deal with the grief he felt after the sudden death of his close friend, Trevor Moore. Even though the plot is fictional, it was inspired by the emotions surrounding real missing children cases like Madeleine McCann and Etan Patz, which influenced the feelings of fear, loss, and community pain shown in the film. Cregger also took ideas from strong historical images, such as the Vietnam War Napalm Attack photo of crying children, and from mystery thrillers like Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners. At the start of this movie, a child narrator claims it is a "true story" to give it an eerie feel and to keep the audience wondering if it could be real.
The Story
The movie takes place in a small town called Maybrook, Pennsylvania. It starts with something really scary, on a Wednesday night at exactly 2:17 in the morning, 17 children from the same third-grade class suddenly get up from their beds and run away from their homes. They all leave at the exact same time, running through the streets like they're being controlled by something. The only child who doesn't disappear is a boy named Alex Lilly.
When morning comes, the parents and teachers discover that almost all the kids from one classroom are missing. The police start investigating, but they can't figure out what happened. There are no clues, no evidence of kidnapping, and no one saw anything suspicious. It's like the children just vanished into thin air.
About a month later, things get really bad for the teacher, Justine Gandy. She's played by Julia Garner, and she's the teacher whose students disappeared. The whole town starts blaming her, thinking she must have done something to make the children run away. People are so angry that someone even writes the word "witch" on her car. The school principal puts her on leave from work, and she becomes really depressed and starts drinking too much alcohol.
Meanwhile, there's a father named Archer Graff, played by Josh Brolin. His son Matthew was one of the missing children, and he's going crazy trying to find him. He's angry at the police because they're not doing enough to find the kids, so he decides to investigate on his own. He's also really mean to Justine because he thinks she's somehow responsible for what happened.
The only child who didn't disappear, Alex Lilly, seems really strange. Justine notices that something is wrong at his house - all the windows are covered with newspapers, and when she peeks inside, she sees Alex's parents just sitting on the couch completely still, like statues. They don't move or talk or do anything normal. This worries her a lot.
Both Justine and Archer start having weird dreams about the missing children and a scary woman who wears makeup like a clown. In one really creepy scene, Justine falls asleep in her car outside Alex's house, and Alex's mother comes out walking like a robot, opens the car door, and cuts off a piece of Justine's hair while she's sleeping.
There's also a homeless man named James who steals things to get money for drugs. He decides to break into Alex's house to steal stuff, but when he gets inside, he makes a shocking discovery - all the missing children are in the basement, standing perfectly still like zombies. They're alive but they don't move or respond to anything. Alex's parents are down there too, just as still and lifeless as the kids.
James sees a poster offering money for information about the missing children, so he tries to go to the police station to tell them what he found. But there's a corrupt police officer named Paul Morgan who chases him away. Paul is Justine's ex-boyfriend, and he's got his own problems with drinking and being mean to people.
When Paul catches James, he takes him back to Alex's house to see if James was telling the truth. Paul goes inside to investigate, but when he comes back out, he's acting just like Alex's parents - walking like a robot and not acting human anymore. He drags James into the house, and James becomes a zombie too.
The scary truth Is revealed when we meet Gladys, who claims to be Alex's aunt. She's played by Amy Madigan and she's actually a witch who's dying and needs to steal life energy from young people to stay alive. She's not really Alex's aunt at all - she's an evil witch who took over Alex's house and put a spell on his parents to make them obey her.
Gladys forced Alex to steal personal items from each of his classmates - things like name tags from their cubbies at school. She used these items to cast a spell that made all the children walk to Alex's house in the middle of the night. Now she's keeping them in the basement and slowly stealing their life force to make herself younger and healthier.
Alex is terrified of Gladys, but he can't tell anyone what's happening because she threatened to kill his parents if he says anything. He has to bring her food and help her with her evil plan, even though he doesn't want to.
The witch also uses her magic to control other adults in the town. She gets personal items from people and then uses them to make those people do whatever she wants. She makes the school principal kill his own husband, and then sends him to attack Justine. During this attack, the principal gets hit by a car and dies.
Finally, Justine and Archer figure out that all the children were running toward Alex's house that night. They go there to investigate and find the horrible truth. But when they get inside, they have to fight against Paul and James, who are now under the witch's control. Justine manages to get Paul's gun and shoots both Paul and James to protect herself and Archer.
In the basement, Archer finds his son Matthew with all the other children, but they're all still acting like zombies. The witch Gladys tries to use her magic to control Archer too, and it works - he starts attacking Justine.
But then something amazing happens. Alex, who has been watching Gladys do her magic for weeks, figures out how her spells work. He uses some hair from her wig to turn her own magic against her. Suddenly, all the children who were under her spell wake up and start chasing Gladys. They're still not completely normal, but now they want to destroy the witch who hurt them.
The children chase Gladys out of the house and through the neighborhood. When they catch her, they attack her and tear her apart, which breaks all her spells. All the people she was controlling - including Archer suddenly snap back to normal. Justine and Archer survive, and Archer gets to hug his son Matthew, even though Matthew still seems confused and damaged from what happened to him.
At the end, we learn that Alex went to live with a different aunt who's actually nice to him, because his parents had to go to a mental hospital to recover from what the witch did to them. All the children were returned to their families, but some of them still can't speak properly because of the trauma they went through.
My Review
When I started watching Weapons, I was really excited. The first fifteen minutes were absolutely incredible. The image of all those children running through the dark streets at the same time was both beautiful and terrifying. I loved how mysterious it was - nobody could understand why this happened, and it felt like we were watching something truly unexplainable and scary.
The movie did a great job showing how a tragedy like this would affect a small town. People were scared, confused, and looking for someone to blame. The way they turned against Justine the teacher felt very realistic - when something terrible happens that we can't understand, we often look for someone to blame, even if they didn't do anything wrong.
Josh Brolin was excellent as the desperate father. You could really feel his pain and frustration as he searched for his missing son. Julia Garner was also great as the teacher who becomes the town's scapegoat. She showed how it feels to be blamed for something you didn't do while you're also grieving and trying to help.
The movie looked absolutely beautiful. The way they filmed the children running at night, the creepy shots of Alex's house with all the covered windows, and the contrast between the dark, scary scenes and the normal daytime scenes was really well done. The music was also perfect for creating a spooky, mysterious mood.
However, I have to be honest I think the movie made some big mistakes that really disappointed me. The biggest problem was that once we found out the witch was behind everything, the mystery became much less interesting. When the story was about an unexplainable tragedy, it felt deep and meaningful. But when it turned out to be just a witch stealing children's life force, it felt like a much simpler, less special story.
I also think the movie spent too much time following characters who didn't really matter to the main story. We spent a lot of time watching the homeless drug addict James and the corrupt cop Paul, but they didn't really add anything important to the story. They were just there to discover the children and then become obstacles for the main characters to fight. I would have preferred to spend more time with the parents of the missing children and see how different families were dealing with this tragedy.
The movie also felt like it couldn't decide what kind of story it wanted to be. It started as a serious, mysterious drama about a community dealing with an inexplicable loss. But by the end, it turned into a more silly horror-comedy with kids chasing a witch through the streets. While that final scene was entertaining, it felt very different from the serious, emotional tone of the beginning.
Some parts of the witch's plan didn't make complete sense to me either. If she needed Alex to stay free so he could help her, why was she willing to risk him getting caught stealing from his classmates? And if she could control people with their personal items, why didn't she just take control of more adults to help her instead of relying on one scared little boy?
The movie also reminded me of school shootings, which are real tragedies that happen in America. The image of children disappearing from their classroom at night felt like it was supposed to make us think about these horrible real events. But then the movie explained it all with a fairy tale witch, which felt like it was avoiding the deeper, more serious themes it had started with.
Despite these problems, I still think Weapons is worth watching. It has some genuinely scary and emotional moments, the acting is very good, and it looks and sounds great. The first half of the movie is really excellent, and even though the second half disappointed me, there are still some exciting and well made scenes.
The movie works best if you think of it as entertainment rather than something with a deep message. If you go in expecting a fun, well-made horror movie with good actors and impressive visuals, you'll probably have a good time. Just don't expect it to be as meaningful or profound as those first fifteen minutes make it seem like it's going to be.