MOVIE REVIEW – Weapons immediately pulls you into that ominous, bone-deep suburban unease—the kind only the dead of night in the suburbs can conjure. While movies from the ‘70s were obsessed with painting big cities as breeding grounds for nightmares, anyone who’s walked a quiet street after dark knows the ‘burbs can be just as nerve-wracking: empty sidewalks, nothing but the echo of your own footsteps, insects buzzing, a flickering blue glow in someone’s window—goosebumps guaranteed. Zach Cregger’s latest nails this visceral discomfort but goes much further, mixing contemporary paranoia, parental panic, and social insanity with biting black humor and grotesque twists. If you thought the suburbs were safe and boring, Weapons—freshly unleashed at Etele Cinema—will make you rethink everything in the dark.

There’s something primally unsettling about the silence that falls over suburbia at night. Forget what ‘70s horror classics said about the city being hell on earth—anyone who’s ever wandered a suburban street after hours knows that oppressive uncertainty blankets these neighborhoods, too. It’s just you, the click of your shoes, the digital buzz of bugs, and now and then the weird TV-light pulsing behind a bedroom curtain, enough to send shivers right down your spine.

Cregger’s Weapons captures that exact mood: the opening sequence sees a handful of kids, looking half-possessed, slipping out of their homes at 2:17 a.m. and melting into the darkness—where are they going, and why? When the scene cuts to grainy doorbell-cam footage, the sense of threat tightens like a vise. Something is very, very wrong here—and you know it from the jump.

With Weapons, Cregger—the mind behind the wild, twisted Barbarian—delivers a film that dives headlong into today’s collective anxieties but never turns preachy. In modern American suburbia, everything is ruled by distrust, fear, and fake-news-fueled panic—everyone is living their own private apocalypse. Parents shout each other down at meetings, banging the drums over rumors and internet hoaxes just to feel relevant. Paranoia has become a full-blown epidemic, and Weapons holds up a merciless, razor-sharp mirror to it all.

Suburban Mosaic – Vanishing Kids, Oppressive Vibes

The story kicks off with a bang: every kid in a local elementary school class—except for one—simply vanishes into the night somewhere in Maybrook. From there, Cregger builds the plot like a suburban remix of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia or Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, weaving together storylines from multiple angles until the bigger picture slowly emerges. It’s an ambitious balancing act, but Cregger somehow makes it look effortless—pulling the strings so that you know you’re watching something special from start to finish.

Once the kids go missing, every parent wants answers—no question about it. Since all the missing children were in the same class, suspicion lands squarely on their teacher, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), who’s sweet but socially awkward and may have a drinking problem lurking under the surface. Ms. Gandy doesn’t have any more answers than the parents, so she starts her own amateur investigation. She’s hardly alone: Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), the desperate father of one of the missing, is convinced Gandy knows more than she’s letting on and launches a quest of his own. Local cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) gets drawn in too—his past tangled with Gandy’s and his own secrets to hide. Add to that a compassionate, slightly broken principal (Benedict Wong), a hopeless junkie (Austin Abrams) who’ll steal whatever’s not nailed down for his next fix, and Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), the only kid who didn’t disappear—and you’ve got one hell of a lineup.

Spoiling anything beyond that would do the film a huge disservice—like Barbarian, unpredictability is half the point. Cregger’s script doles out clues drip by drip, eventually answering every big question, but by the time the truth comes out, you’ve already been through a barrage of dark, twisted, and yes—laugh-out-loud—moments that’ll leave your head spinning. You can feel Cregger’s comedy roots in every scene: the way he fuses horror and humor is masterful. Weapons can be genuinely scary, but there are scenes (especially the off-the-rails finale) that send the audience into devilish laughter. Horror and comedy rarely mesh this seamlessly, but here, it’s pure magic.

Paranoia Without the Jumpscares

Cregger keeps leveling up as a filmmaker—this time, he’s in complete command of mood and atmosphere. He wisely goes light on the jumpscares and instead weaponizes the primal fear of the unknown—that creeping sense we all get walking our own streets at night. The details of suburban life are spot-on: liquor stores, rundown bars, perfectly manicured lawns, and always that one house that seems just a little too dark, a little too quiet, a little too secretive. The idyllic neighborhood? All an illusion—safety is a myth, and you never know what’s lurking behind someone’s front door.

What really sets Weapons apart is its approach to character: no superheroes here, just flawed, painfully human people. Garner’s Justine Gandy is likable but prone to some truly questionable decisions—not the classic horror-movie dumb choices, but ones you or I might make when everything’s gone off the rails. Brolin’s dad character is anything but patient or passive—he’s raw, abrasive, sometimes outright irritating, but his motives always land, and you can’t help but root for him, even if you sometimes want to shake him.

The supporting cast is so real it’s almost uncomfortable: you genuinely invest in their fates and worry what’s waiting for them by the end. Amy Madigan deserves a special shout-out—she tackles a brutally tricky role and absolutely nails it, though you’ll get no spoilers here.

There’s Always Another Skeleton in the Suburban Closet

What made Barbarian so brilliant was the constant sense that you never knew where it was headed—Weapons nails the same unpredictable vibe. Crucially, Cregger never relies on cheap tricks or shock for its own sake. There’s a method to the madness; even when the final act pulls back the curtain and reveals its secrets (maybe losing a bit of mystique), the film leaves a few key mysteries unsolved—because that’s what real horror is all about: not everything gets an answer.

Weapons expertly blends ominous atmosphere with razor-sharp, cynical humor, landing itself squarely among the best horror films of the year. With this film, Cregger proves once and for all: he’s a powerhouse in modern horror.

– Gergely Herpai “BadSector” –