Weapons was released in the United States by Warner Bros. Pictures on August 8, 2025. The film received critical acclaim and became a box office success, grossing $235.2 million worldwide on a $38 million budget.
Plot
The film is presented in a nonlinear narrative, with chapters for various characters whose stories intersect. The following is a linear summary of the plot.
A child narrator explains that on a Wednesday two years previously, in the town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, seventeen children from elementary school teacher Justine Gandy's third-grade class suddenly ran from their homes at 2:17a.m. and disappeared. Only one student, Alex Lilly, remained.
Almost a month after the incident, Principal Marcus Miller places Justine on leave amid community suspicion of her involvement in the children's disappearance. Depressed and ostracized, she relapses into alcoholism and starts an affair with her married ex-boyfriend, police officer Paul Morgan. Concerned for Alex's well-being, Justine follows him home. After noticing Alex's windows are all covered with newspaper and spotting his parents sitting motionless in the dark, she urges Marcus to perform a wellness check. While performing a stakeout at Alex's house, Justine falls asleep in her car; Alex's mother enters the car and cuts a lock of Justine's hair.
Archer Graff, father of missing child Matthew, begins his own investigation, frustrated with the police's minimal progress. After reviewing security camera footage of Matthew and another child, he notices that the children's running paths converge at a specific area but cannot determine their exact destination. Both Justine and Archer dream about the missing children and a mysterious woman with clown-like makeup.
While on patrol, Paul arrests James, a vagrant drug addict, for attempted burglary, but is forced to release him after assaulting him in view of his car's camera. Later, while burglarizing Alex's house, James finds Alex's parents and the missing children in the basement in a catatonic state. He reports his findings to the police in hopes of earning the $50,000 reward, but Paul, fearing being reported, chases him out. James flees into the woods, hiding in his tent after spotting the clown-like woman. When caught by Paul, James insists he knows where the missing children are. Paul drives to Alex's house, leaving James handcuffed in the car while he investigates. Hours later, Paul reemerges and drags James inside.
Marcus is visited at school by the woman, who introduces herself as Alex's great-aunt Gladys and explains that she has become the family's caretaker after Alex's parents fell ill. Marcus insists on meeting Alex's parents for a wellness check. Later, Gladys visits Marcus and his husband Terry at their home. She performs a ritual with a ribbon stolen from Marcus and locks of Terry and Justine's hair. She enchants Marcus, forcing him to kill Terry and pursue Justine. Marcus attacks Justine at a gas station, interrupting an argument between her and Archer, and is fatally hit by a car when he pursues her as she escapes. Archer later apologizes to Justine for his hostility toward her and shares his findings with her. Justine realizes that the children were all running toward Alex's house.
It is revealed that Gladys, a dying witch who can enchant victims and either drain their energy to rejuvenate herself or command them to kill for her, had enchanted Alex's parents, subsequently threatening their lives to persuade Alex to keep her secret. She then ordered him to bring home personal items from each of his classmates, which she used to draw the children to Alex's house so she could keep them in the basement to feed on their life force.
Justine and Archer enter Alex's house, where they are attacked by the enchanted Paul and James before Justine takes Paul's gun and fatally shoots them both. Archer searches for Matthew in the basement, but Gladys enchants him and sends him to attack Justine. Meanwhile, Alex evades his bewitched parents and replicates Gladys's spell using a strand of hair from her wig. The children emerge from the basement, chase Gladys out of the house and around the neighborhood, and tear her apart. Her death frees her victims, though all but Archer remain in a catatonic state.
As Archer carries Matthew home, the narrator explains that Alex moved out of town to live with a different aunt after his parents were institutionalized. The children were all reunited with their parents, and some eventually began speaking again.
According to Cregger, the script was given through the software app Embershot to the studios on January 23, 2023, at 8:00a.m., and by 9:30a.m., Michael De Luca, CEO of Warner Bros. Pictures, contacted him to close the deal.[6] New Line secured the rights within 24 hours after offering $38million to cover all costs, including production and salaries, with Cregger receiving $10million as writer, director, and producer and final cut privilege (pending test screening reactions to the film) in addition to a guaranteed theatrical release.[10] Universal offered $7 million less than Warner Brothers.[12]Jordan Peele, whose company Monkeypaw Productions participated in the bidding war in conjunction with Universal, parted ways with longtime managers Joel Zadak and Peter Principato, the latter of whom was also Cregger's manager, after losing the auction.[13]
Cregger's CAA agent, Joe Mann, negotiated a $10 million upfront fee, of which Cregger deferred $2 million in return for 50 backend points on the movie.[14]
According to Cregger, Madigan "saved" the movie. When discussing the character, he stated that he gave her two options as to Gladys' origin: one where she was a regular person using witchcraft to prevent her dying from an incurable condition, and one where she was instead an immortal creature performing an approximate simulacrum of a human being, but that he did not ask her which one she chose.[24]
Filming
Principal photography took place in Atlanta in May 2024.[20] Filming wrapped in July 2024.[25] The Maybrook Elementary School was set in Tucker, Georgia.[25] According to Time Out, on the busiest days of filming, the production would be home to more than 170 children. Child labor coordinators were enlisted to keep the kids engaged when not filming.[25] The gas station scenes were filmed over the course of three days at a BP gas station and convenience store in Covington, Georgia.[25]
Post-production
The film's ending was initially going to end with a silent shot of Matthew, but due to negative test audiences reaction, voiceover was added.[26]
Weapons was originally scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States and Canada on January 16, 2026, before being rescheduled to be released on August 8, 2025, due to strong, positive reception from test screenings[30][31] The earliest Thursday screenings were held at 2:17p.m., a reference to the film having 2:17a.m. as a major plot point.[32]
Reception
Box office
As of September2,2025[update], Weapons has grossed $135 million in the United States and Canada, and $100.2 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $235.2 million.[3][4]
In the United States and Canada, Weapons was released alongside Freakier Friday and Sketch, and was projected to gross $25–40 million from 3,200 theaters in its opening weekend.[12][2] It grossed $18.2 million on its first day, including $5.7 million from Thursday previews.[33][34] It went on to debut to $43.5 million, topping the box office and made Warner Bros. the first studio in history to have six consecutive of their films open at #1 with more than $40 million.[35][36] The film dropped only 44% in the second weekend, grossing $24.4 million.[37]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 344 critics' reviews are positive.The website's consensus reads: "Zach Cregger spins an expertly crafted yarn of terrifying mystery and thrilling intrigue in Weapons, a sophomore triumph that solidifies his status as a master of horror."[38]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[39] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed by PostTrak gave it an average 4 out of 5 stars, with 65% saying they would "definitely recommend" it.[40][41]
Empire's John Nugent gave the film a perfect 5 stars out of 5 rating, and wrote, "The entire film, in fact, is something that shouldn't work, but does. Can a film about missing children and grief be called a crowd-pleaser? In Zach Cregger's hands, it feels almost effortless."[42] Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, deeming the film a superior follow-up to Barbarian, stating, "One of the greatest strengths of Cregger's ambitious script is its abject refusal to connect every dot in the manner that so much 'elevated horror' has done in recent years. Still, it's not overly difficult to read the inciting incident of Weapons as a school shooting allegory."[43]Variety's Peter Debruge praised the film, and wrote, "Regardless of how you feel about the bittersweet ending (and many will happily embrace the movie's darkly comic bittersweet finale), Cregger has achieved something remarkable here, crafting a cruel and twisted bedtime story of the sort the Brothers Grimm might have spun—not the kid-friendly Disney version, mind you, but the kind where characters kill on command and audiences find it difficult to sleep afterward."[44] Tim Grierson of Screen Daily noted that "Cregger does terrific work answering the riddles he has teased throughout the runtime" while further stating, "Weapons gracefully balances its different tensions, all of them cathartically released during the superbly orchestrated, graphically violent final 20 minutes."[45] Charles Pulliam-Moore of The Verge praised the film's themes, writing: "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."[46]
Tom Jorgensen of IGN gave the film score of 9 out of 10 and wrote, "Weapons is a righteous, fully actualized genre-bender in which writer-director Zach Cregger hones Barbarian's blend of unbearable tension and dark humor to a new level of razor-sharpness."[47] Mark Kennedy of Associated Press awarded the film with 4.5 stars out of 5, and wrote, "If Barbarian came out of left field three years ago and heralded an exciting new voice in filmmaking, Weapons doesn't disappoint but it doesn't have the advantage of surprise."[48]
William Bibbiani of TheWrap gave a less positive review, finding the film's resolution "a lot less frightening, and a lot more contrived, than it would have had [Cregger] not invited us to ponder more powerful possibilities for over an hour before tipping his hand." He nevertheless praised the cast, particularly Brolin and Garner, for doing "difficult, layered work", and the cinematography for "find[ing] the eeriest camera angle in damn near every scene, whether it's overtly shocking or insidiously banal."[49]
Cregger discussed a potential sequel to Weapons in an interview with Variety, saying, "I have another idea for something in this world that I'm kind of excited about. I'm not going to do it next, and I probably won't do it after my next movie, but I do have one and I'd like to see it on the screen one day."[51]
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