Zach Cregger’s “Weapons” is, as of this writing, one of the most acclaimed motion pictures of 2025. It’s got a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, out of 214 reviews and counting. Which means only a handful of critics have seen Cregger’s film and didn’t give it their stamp of approval.
I am one of the handful.
That doesn’t make me special. That doesn’t make me right or wrong. It just means that I didn’t care for the film, no matter how much I may admire its various pieces. As a professional critic it is my responsibility to be honest about my opinion — whatever it is, whether anyone agrees or not — and explain how I got there. Without an explanation it’s not criticism, it’s just an opinion. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, of course, but I’m not allowed to stop there. Getting into the nitty-gritty is my trade. And since you’re reading one of the trades right now, let’s talk about that.
My review of “Weapons” was, in the interest of not spoiling the film before release, written with my hands tied behind my back. The reason I didn’t care for “Weapons” is easy to explain but propriety demanded that I shut the hell up about it. To explain why I didn’t like the film I would have to discuss the plot of “Weapons” in detail, right up to the end, and engage with the resolution of the film’s many mysteries. And that would be a big “no no.”
It would be good criticism, of course, but it would “spoil” the movie. A “spoiler,” just to make sure we’re all on the same page, is information that, if revealed, would theoretically ruin the impact of the work of art. What counts as a “spoiler” has always been a matter of debate. I distinctly remember seeing “Blade Runner 2049” and being told, flat out, what the studio considered a “spoiler.” The first scene of the movie was on the list. How the heck are we supposed to write about a film when we can’t write about the film? Remember “Caddo Lake?” Of course you don’t, because we weren’t allowed to talk about “Caddo Lake.” The film’s premise was declared off-limits.
But sometimes the definition of a “spoiler” is pretty obvious. In the case of a film that’s built around a mystery, “the solution to the mystery” qualifies as a spoiler by any reasonable standard.
So here, now that the film is out in the world, is my full spoiler review of “Weapons.”
SPOILER ALERT: We are going to talk about the ending of “Weapons.”
“Weapons,” to get us all grounded again, is about a group of children, from the same elementary school class, who all go missing, in the middle of the night, at the exact same time. They just got out of bed and ran outside, never to be seen again. Or so we think.
Zach Cregger’s film explores the aftermath of this seemingly inexplicable tragedy in several ways, but one of the focal points is Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), the teacher whose students went missing. The whole town thinks she’s responsible so they hound her left and right. They even write “WITCH” in giant letters on her car.
Zach Cregger is not being very subtle: This is a witch hunt, which means that Justine is unfairly accused. After all, that’s how witch hunts worked. (Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” wasn’t about a bunch of people who were fairly accused.) When tragedy befalls a community, people look for a way to make sense of it all, and too often that means finding someone to blame, even if they don’t deserve it. And historically, they often don’t.
Justine Gandy doesn’t, that’s for sure. She’s a good teacher who cares about her students, maybe to a fault. And although this might seem unrelated, she also expresses her own sexual agency by seducing her ex-boyfriend. This only makes people hate her more. This town doesn’t like women like Justine Gandy.
For half the film, “Weapons” depicts witch hunts as very bad things, which is a reasonable take on the subject. That’s why it kinda falls apart when it turns out the townsfolk were merely hunting the wrong witch.
I don’t mean that in a metaphoric sense. The culprit is a literal witch: Gladys, played by Amy Madigan. She’s not just evil, she’s physically monstrous. “Weapons” displays her aging, wrinkled, apparently cancer-stricken body as if it’s a terrifying shock. As though nothing could be scarier than [checks notes] an elderly woman. Adding insult to that injury, when Gladys gets dolled up to go outside she wears a clownish red wig and exaggerated makeup. I guess nothing could be scarier than a conventionally unattractive woman either.
The demonization of womanhood is compounded when you consider Cregger’s previous horror movie, “Barbarian.” (Spoilers for “Barbarian” incoming, by the way.) The literal monster in “Barbarian” turned out to be The Mother, a malformed and abused woman, whose body Cregger’s film also considered horrific, in that case a source for gross-out scares. In the exciting climaxes of both “Barbarian” and “Weapons” these women suffer brutal, violent deaths, and although Gladys seems more cartoonishly evil than The Mother, and perhaps karmically deserves a terrible end, the brutality of her demise suggests we’re supposed to take twisted pleasure in watching her body get mutilated. This after evoking the history of witch trials, which persecuted women, leading to their public executions.
I don’t find that satisfying. I find it immature and simplistic, and it’s certainly got sexist overtones, at least. “Weapons” evokes many terrifying, sadly familiar notions, including school shootings and child abuse, but in the end it boils down to a literal witch. We’re being tricked into thinking this is a film about important subjects, only to find out halfway through that it’s an unremarkable monster story, albeit told in a remarkable way.
As I said in my non-spoiler review, pieces of “Weapons” are phenomenal. I have nothing but praise for the performances, the cinematography, the music and the editing. But that’s not all a movie is. You can get John Williams to score a film that’s just one long shot of man taking a dump, but it’s still a scat movie and at some point you’ll have to reckon with that, no matter how epic the score is. Roger Ebert famously argued that it’s not what a film is about, it’s how it is about it. But it’s still gotta be about something and if that something doesn’t work, it’s fair game to criticize it.
There are other elements in “Weapons” that almost mitigate this issue, but upon scrutiny, they don’t seem to work either. One could argue that the witch is a metaphor for an abusive relative, and yeah, no kidding, that’s exactly what she is. But how does that connect with the rest of the class? “Weapons” shows that Alex (Cary Christopher), Gladys’ nephew, after watching Gladys torture his parents, helps her abduct his fellow students. This film evokes the horrors of a school shooting, and without Alex that tragedy couldn’t have been possible, which suggests that Alex is the analogue for the school shooter. But don’t worry, it turns out witches were really to blame? Question mark?
I’m not convinced. Even if Cregger is arguing that we should be more attentive to children who show signs of being mistreated — a message we can (hopefully) all agree on — turning that horrifying experience into a straight-up monster movie, after treating the message more seriously for half the film, undermines that theme. There don’t seem to be many bad parents in “Weapons,” at least not until their kids go missing. It’s an interloper that’s to blame, and again, I’m not convinced that’s as meaningful as this movie thinks it is.
“Weapons” demonizes the other, and in this case the other is unattractive elderly women, which I guess is supposed to freak us out. As though none of us know any old people. And although there’s a lot of excitement at the end of “Weapons,” including a laughably over the top demise for that interloping woman, the fact that all this build-up led to, essentially, Zach Cregger pointing and yelling “WIIIITCH!” didn’t work for me as much as it seemed to for practically everybody else.