Electric, terrifying and hypnotically creepy af, writer/director Zach Creeger’s latest psychological horror, “Weapons,” dips its toe into the unknowable on many levels. Who are your neighbors? Who are the people in your community? And how can you properly articulate the power and seduction of the occult? All of these questions are posed in a terrifically crafted thriller that is deeply ambitious on a script and POV level, taut and unnerving on a cinematic one, and viscerally intense and petrifying. It’s a distressing film that arguably bests his terrific debut, “Barbarian,” in disturbing dread, anxiously unsettling mood and visual bravura that’s still deceptively subtle.
If the impeccably directed and claustrophobically scary “Barbarian” announced Creeger as a bold and exciting new filmmaker in the realm of horror thrillers, then the equally alarming “Weapons” cements that position and elevates the auteur to a Jordan Peele-like level; all his films from here on out will likely be seen as an event within this genre.
The most structurally ambitious horror movie in ages, perhaps like no others that are usually very linear, Creeger pulls from Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia,” and even “Pulp Fiction,” to experience the terrible events of a suburban trauma from multiple perspectives which turn into five different chapters that all crescendo in a fever-pitched third act of unbridled sheer “holy shit!” terror.
“Weapons” begins with a child’s voice-over setting the stage for every parent’s nightmare, but a strange and mysterious one that turns a community against itself and makes it deeply suspicious and mistrustful.
On one fateful night, all but one child in public school teacher Justine Gandy’s (Emmy winner Julia Garner from “Ozark”) classroom of 17 children gets up, runs out of their houses and vanishes into the night. And subsequent Ring and home security footage confirms that all 16 children did this simultaneously at 2:17 am.

“Weapons” begins in this aftermath; parents, a school and a community in chaos, left to wonder where their children went, what the police are doing about it and why, of all the children in the school, did these kids all mystifyingly vanish from Ms. Gandy’s class and hers alone?
Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), the lone boy from Ms. Gandy’s classroom, and the equally bereft teacher, is questioned. However, law enforcement never sees them as suspects and a community is left to ponder in anger and eat itself alive with distrust.
Chapter one focuses on the caring and grief-stricken Ms. Gandy and her perspective as a person that this suburbia does not trust and views as a suspect despite her evident love and concern for her students. Her car is vandalized, her house is stalked, and “Weapons” does an incredible job of portraying the spine-chilling sensation that she has always been watched and hunted.
Chapter two centers on the angry and exasperated Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), the father of Matthew, one of the missing children, who doesn’t take no for an answer and is always demanding answers from the police while keeping a watchful eye on Ms. Gandy
Chapter three focuses on Andrew Marcus (Benedict Wong), the school principal who advises Ms. Gandy to take a leave of absence and warns her to stay away from her quiet student Alex, whom she’s desperate to talk to, to try and glean some answers. Chapters four and five hinge on a local cop, Paul Morgan (Alden Ehrenreich), who has a complicated, unfinished relationship past with Ms. Gandy and James (Austin Abrams), a local drug addict kid who begs, borrows and steals to feed his habit.
Amy Madigan stars as Alex’s strange aunt Gladys and Toby Huss, June Diane Raphael and Whitmer Thomas also co-star, but revealing too much more plot and the how, who and why of the children’s sudden disappearance would be to rob one of a terrifically nightmarish and unsettling cinematic experience that centers on a bewitching hour, but still stays wisely ambiguous and unattainable.
Suffice it to say, Creeger does it again and then some, outdoing the suffocating, mostly indoor setting of “Barbarian” to step into the suburban night for “Weapons.”

And if Creeger and cinematographer Zach Kuperstein’s camera were the ace in the hole for “Barbarian,” the MVP of this one, aside from an outstanding ensemble cast, and an emerging auteur’s cinematic eye is the profoundly chilling score by Ryan Holladay, Hays Holladay and Cregger; a deeply unsettling cacophony of nerve-wracking noise, haunting, spidery cellos and eerily hair-raising sonic ephemera.
While Creeger’s camera is once again bold, precision-laden from-behind tracking shots that are reminiscent of PTA’s “Magnolia,” with similar whip pans to create further agitating and stressful tension, the camera is at times often deviously ingenious in a type of clever simplicity. And some shots and complementary quick edits are simply outstanding, but you might be too enthralled and panicked to truly notice (this will make for a deliciously entertaining second watch for those interested in the mechanics of masterfully engineered horror).
Without being too overtly political, and yet underscoring our current moment, Creeger delicately embeds the notion of a distrusting, divided nation as a microcosm in suburbia, angry, upset, unsure where to aim their powerless rage, and pointing caustic blame and fingers at anyone in range.
It’s the fury of the disenfranchised exacerbated by inexplicable mystery, frustration, and lack of answers by way of something far less complicated and far more sinister. But if America is a volatile powder keg of dysfunction, Creeger lobs a menacing Molotov cocktail of turmoil into the mix, which sets this bucolic suburbia ablaze.
And again, while Creeger eventually lets the audience in on the mystery of it all, the uncanny necromancer behind it all and its wiccan sensibilities, many of the details are left equivocal, never spelled out and yet still decipherable to the audience.
The ensemble cast is terrific, too, but Brolin and Garner are tremendous leads as fearful, concerned, mourning and irate community members, while a special shout-out must be given to Benedict Wong for one of the freakiest mid-movie reintroductions in recent memory (I honestly shrieked more than once in the film).
Overall, “Weapons” underscores how in command Creeger is of his entire movie, the mise-en-scène, the craft, tone, mood and sweaty, ominous, dread-inducing atmosphere. Its final act is batshit crazy and climaxes in a jaw-dropping wave of exhilarating, terrifying feeding frenzy of satisfying comeuppance. “Weapons” will leave you thrilled, aghast, horrified and wowed. It’s a disquieting movie about the evil forces that manipulate us into turning on ourselves, our brothers and sisters and our next-door neighbors. And while there’s nary a shred of political imagery or overt allegory to be found, the frightening drama is still an effective and insidious commentary on how we become divided, the parasitic nature of unhinged control freaks and those who feed on our fear. Brace for impact. It’s a weapons-grade movie; deadly, viciously precise, an assault on the emotional psyche for the ages and easily one of the year’s best films. [A]