Weapons: a gruesome puzzle box horror of jolts and jump scares

Writer-director Zach Cregger’s elaborate follow-up to Barbarian (2022) is deliberately tricky, with the kind of ending which in the theatre (from The Bat to The Mouse Trap) would require the lead actor to take a curtain call and request the audience not give it away to friends. As in Barbarian, it’s not so much that twists are without precedent but that the path taken from puzzlement to understanding is labyrinthine.

The hook is strong: one night in the small city of Maybrook Pennsylvania, all children (except one) from the same elementary school class get out of bed and run into the streets (with a distinctive penguin-like arms-out gait) then disappear. The investigation (and the town’s ire) focuses on Justine (Julia Garner), the class’s teacher, and holdout kid Alex (Cary Christopher). 

In a structure familiar from Stephen King novels (Needful Things) and Robert Altman films (1993’s Short Cuts), the story is told out of order in chapters which highlight a range of characters, starting with Justine – a troubled drinker even before the incident – and Archer (Josh Brolin), alpha dog among abandoned parents who is sure Justine knows something she isn’t telling. 

At first, the phenomenon seems like an X-File spin on The Pied Piper and suspicion turns to alien abduction or mad science experiments. Archer’s non sequitur vision of a rifle in the sky is the first hint at a rationale for the title. Then focus switches to other characters who have their own views on the mystery: a cop (Alden Ehrenreich) who hooks up with Justine and falls off the sobriety wagon; a tent-dwelling lowlife (Austin Abrams) with a keen eye to exploit any situation; and the concerned school principal (Benedict Wong) who delivers the film’s most shocking jump scare.

The last act finally gets to Alex, the secret hero of the tale, and transforms the film into another kind of horror movie. This revolves around a startlingly eccentric turn from Amy Madigan – at last given material to match her early showings in Streets of Fire (1984), Alamo Bay (1985) and Field of Dreams (1989) – as Aunt Gladys, an ailing relation who came to stay (with her strange pot plant) before the trouble started. Aunt Gladys is funny, scary and formidable; the whispery, low-key mood changes as she becomes a dominant presence, leavening gruesome horror with absurdist comedy. 

Weapons is nearly an hour longer than the average creepy movie – Imaginary (2024) or Baghead (2023) – but Cregger’s mosaic approach justifies extra running time as he asks us to put pieces together for ourselves while delivering jolts with sudden crossed wires. 

 ► Weapons is in UK cinemas now.