It’s been a banner year for original scripts! Something that’s impossible to view as nothing but an absolute win. Sinners blew the doors off the box office, The Materialists performed admirably against its budget, and now we have another movie over performing both the box office and the critics with Zach Cregger’s follow up to Barbarian, Weapons.

The film opens centered on Justine (Julia Garner), an unmarried teacher in a small town, as she is thrown into the center of controversy after her entire class mysteriously disappears. Each child running away from home in the dead of night, at 2:17 AM to be exact, their arms strangely extended like middle schoolers Naruto running into the darkness. The movie unfolds like a puzzle box follows her first, following Justine first, and then introducing new characters in a series of point-of-view vignettes. Seeing each view point shows a new corner of the town the disappearances took place in, and how different characters are reacting to the trauma of the missing children.

Alongside Justine is Archer (Josh Brolin), a father of one of the missing children, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) a beat cop, James (Austin Abrams) a homeless junkie, and Marcus (Benedict Wong) the principal of the school. Each character with their own attachment to the tragedy, each trying to help in their own way and for their own reasons. Seeing a small quaint town from the viewpoint of a single woman for instance shows a certain angle, seeing that same character and that same town from a parent of a student shows how people are viewed versus how they see themselves.

There’s so much Barbarian DNA in Weapons it’s hard to ignore. It’s build to the apex has a similar feeling as the mystery slowly unspools to reveal something no one could have guessed. Even the amount of humor blended in with the terror is familiar. It’s hard to say that Cregger’s formula for horror is formulaic, even if they feel familiar, as both films are truly wholly original at the end of the day.

Unlike Barbarian, Weapons doesn’t feel quite as tightly plotted. The message is more opaque, although I expect an image of an assault rifle floating above a home in Archer’s dream is centered close to the meaning. Pairing missing children with visions of automatic weapons is one that hits eerily close to home in any suburban American setting. There are other devices that the film brings to mind, with Justine being accused of being a witch for her class going missing. The idea of an unmarried woman being still unpalatable, even in (if not especially in) 2025 America. The movie winds up feeling more nationalistic than many others that are trying their patriotic best, even if it’s for all the reasons we are often ashamed of our country.

Even as it’s not as neatly conducted as Cregger’s first movie, Weapons is a blast of a film. A bloody good time whose twists and turns will keep you guessing at every level. And the fact they jammed a Ferris Buelleresque backyard chase scene through a series of backyards? It makes it all the more delightful.

4/5