About
Weapons (2025) is a mystery horror film produced and directed by Zach Cregger and staring Josh Brolin, Julia Garner and Benedict Wong among others. The film set in a small suburban town where seven children from the same classroom mysteriously ran away from home at 2:17 AM on the same night. The story follows the childrens’ teacher, a concerned father and various townspeople as they uncover the mystery of the strange disappearances. The film first gained attention online after film media reported that acclaimed horror movie director Jordan Peele supposedly parted ways with his longtime managers after losing a bidding war on the script.
History
Zach Cregger began working on the script for Weapons after the release of his 2022 horror film Barbarian, citing Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Magnolia (1999) and Jennifer Egan’s novel A Visit from the Goon Squad as key influences. New Line Cinema, a subsidiary of Warner Bros secured the rights to the script after a four-way bidding war. Notably, Jordan Peele parted ways with Joel Zadak and Peter Principato (who is also Cregger’s manager) after he lose the auction for the script.
On April 27th, 2025, Warner Bros’ official YouTube channel posted a 2 hour long video showing CCTV and Ring camera footage of kids running out of their homes, gathering over 70,000 views in three months.
The first trailer for Weapons was released on the same YouTube channel on April 29th, 2025, gathering over 21 million views in three months.
Reception
Critical response to Weapons was generally positive. Rotten Tomatoes awarded the film a “Certified Fresh” review after it received positive reviews from 96% of 205 critics’ reviews. Metacritic assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100 based on reviews by 46 critics.
RogerEbert.com published a review by Brian Tallerico that gave the film 3.8 out of 4 stars. The reviewer described the film as a superior follow-up to Barbarian, adding, “It’s not overly difficult to read the inciting incident of Weapons as a school shooting allegory.”
The Verge published a review by Charles Pulliam-Moore that read, “One of Weapons’ more impressive feats is the way it builds on that contentious dynamic to make a point about how communities often conjure up convenient boogeymen to blame, rather than confronting the things that actually endanger children.”
Online Reactions
Several internet users posted memes and jokes about the release of the film in early August 2025, as seen in an August 5th, 2025 tweet by X user @cowboyfgt, who posted a GIF of a child running with their arms sticking out, writing, “its weapons week #BRINGINGWEAPONSTOTHETHEATER” and gathering over 40,000 likes in four days.
On August 7th, X user @BriAnimator_ posted an edited poster for Weapons with the Stan Twitter Girl edited into the meme, gathering over 400,000 views and 14,000 likes in two days.
On August 8th, X user @luv2read13 posted an image of a child running with his arms outstretched in the 2025 horror film Weapons, joking, “omw to the liqa sto.” The post gathered over 45,000 likes in a day.
Also on August 8th, X user @dorohlez posted a clip of the Area 51 Naruto Runner, joking, “Gonna tell my kids this was Weapons #WeaponsMovie”
Various Examples
Search Interest
Unavailable.