Weapons was released in theaters in the United States on August 8, 2025, by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film received positive reviews, and grossed $268 million against a $38 million budget.
Plot
A child narrator explains that two years ago, seventeen children from a from a third-grade classroom in the town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, unexpectedly ran out of their homes at 2:17 a.m. and disappeared; only one student, Alex Lilly, remained. Their teacher, Justine Gandy, is placed on leave amid suspicion that she is responsible for the disappearances, resulting in her relapsing into alcoholism and having an affair with her married ex-boyfriend, police officer Paul Morgan.
Concerned for Alex's well-being, Justine follows him home, discovering the windows of his house covered with newspaper, and his parents sitting motionless inside. She implores principal Marcus Miller to perform a wellness check. While watching Alex's house, Justine falls asleep in her car. Alex's mother enters the car and cuts off a lock of Justine's hair. Archer Graff, the father of Matthew, one of the missing children, grows frustrated with the police's minimal progress in the investigation, and starts his own. Reviewing smart doorbell footage of Matthew and another child, he notices that their running paths converge, but cannot pinpoint their destination. Both Justine and Archer have nightmares about the missing children and a mysterious elderly woman.
While on patrol, Paul stops a homeless drug addict named James for attempted burglary. When Paul assaults James after pricking his finger on a needle during a search, he realizes that his car's dashcam caught the incident and lets him go on the condition they never encounter each other again. Later, James burgles Alex's house and finds the missing children in the basement. He attempts to report his findings in order to collect the $50,000 reward, but Paul spots and chases him. While fleeing, James spots the mysterious woman nearby. When Paul catches him, James tells him that he knows where the missing children are. Arriving at Alex's house, Paul enters to investigate, leaving James handcuffed in his car. Hours later, Paul comes out and drags James inside.
The mysterious woman arrives at the elementary school and introduces herself as Alex's aunt, Gladys. She tells Marcus that she is helping care for Alex's family after his parents fell ill. When Marcus insists on performing a wellness check, Gladys unexpectedly arrives at the home of Marcus and his husband, Terry, the next day. She cuts off a lock of Terry's hair and performs a ritual that causes Marcus to become bewitched by her. After killing Terry on command, Gladys sends him to kill Justine, interrupting an argument between her and Archer at a gas station. When Marcus pursues a fleeing Justine while Archer follows, he is fatally struck by a car. Later, at the hospital, Archer shows Justine his findings, and she realizes the children were running toward Alex's house.
In a flashback, Gladys came to live at Alex’s house in order to heal. One day, Alex comes home to discover that Gladys had bewitched his parents in order to feed off of their life forces and threatens to make them kill each other if he tells anyone about her presence. Realizing his parents’ life forces are insufficient to her, Gladys tells Alex to gather a personal belonging from his classmates so she can feed off of them, and he complies, believing she would leave once she gets better. Using his classmate's personalized nametags, Gladys draws the children to Alex's house and keep them in the basement.
Realizing she has been caught, Gladys tells Alex that they need to leave. Archer and Justine enter Alex's house and are attacked by Paul and James. Justine manages to get Paul's gun and kills them both. Archer searches for Matthew in the basement, but is bewitched by Gladys into attacking Justine. Alex evades his bewitched parents and replicates Gladys' spell using a strand of her real hair, caught on the underside of her wig. The children emerge from the basement, chase Gladys through the neighborhood, and tear her apart. Her death seems to free her victims, though only Archer appears fully responsive right away. Archer eventually finds Matthew and starts carrying him home.
The child narrator then explains that Alex moved out of town to live with a different aunt after his parents were institutionalized. The children all went home, and some have even started talking again this year.
Luke Speakman as Matthew Graff, Archer's son and one of Justine's missing students
Clayton Farris as Terry Miller, Marcus's husband
Production
Zach Cregger auctioned the rights to the film's script for $38million.
Development
After the financial and critical success of his film Barbarian (2022), Zach Cregger began work on a new spec script titled Weapons. It has been described as a "horror epic" with a more "personal story" for the filmmaker, inspired by Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia (1999), Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners (2013), and Jennifer Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad.[6][7][8] Cregger was inspired to write the screenplay after the death of his close friend and collaborator, Trevor Moore;[9][10] a reference to a sketch written by Moore for The Whitest Kids U' Know was added into the finished script.[11] The screenplay entered the market on January 22, 2023, sparking interest by Netflix, New Line Cinema, TriStar Pictures and Universal Pictures.[12][13] According to Cregger, within 90 minutes of electronically distributing the script to the studios the following morning at 8:00, Michael De Luca, CEO of Warner Bros. Pictures, contacted him to close the deal.[7] 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.[12] Universal offered $7 million less than Warner Bros.[14]Jordan Peele's company Monkeypaw Productions participated in the bidding war in conjunction with Universal. Peele dismissed longtime managers Joel Zadak and Peter Principato, the latter of whom was also Cregger's manager, after losing the opportunity.[15]
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 film.[16]
Revisions to the script following the sale included having Archer apologize to his employees during a scene at a construction site as well as having Alex steal the name tags for Aunt Gladys.[17]
The importance of Gladys' character necessitated the correct casting for that role. Cregger recalled liking Madigan's performance in Field of Dreams (1989), and believed she would give a great performance after spotting her in a list of potential casting choices.[27] According to him, Madigan "saved" the film. When discussing the character, he stated that he gave her two options as to Gladys's 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.[28]
Filming
Principal photography took place in the Atlanta area in May 2024[23] and wrapped in July 2024.[29] The Maybrook Elementary School location was in Tucker, Georgia.[29] According to Time Out, on the busiest days of filming, 170 children were involved. Child labor coordinators were enlisted to keep the kids engaged outside of filming.[29] The gas station scenes were filmed over the course of three days at a BP gas station and convenience store in Covington, Georgia.[29]
Post-production
The film initially ended with a silent shot of Matthew. After it received negative reactions at a test screening, a voiceover from the child narrator was added.[30]
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.[34][35] The earliest Thursday screenings were held at 2:17p.m., a reference to the film having 2:17a.m. as a major plot point.[36]
Weapons grossed $151.6 million in the United States and Canada, and $116.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $268.3 million.[3][4] In September 2025, Variety reported the film was expected to make a theatrical profit of at least $65million.[40]
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.[14][2] It grossed $18.2 million on its first day, including $5.7 million from Thursday previews.[41][42] It went on to debut to $43.5 million, topping the box office and making Warner Bros. the first studio in history to have six consecutive films open at #1 with more than $40 million.[43][44] The film dropped only 44% in the second weekend, grossing $24.4 million while maintaining the top spot.[45] The film dropped to second place in its third weekend behind the sing-along version of KPop Demon Hunters, which grossed $19.2 million, while Weapons grossed $15.4 million.[46]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 385 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."[47]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100, based on 48 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[48] 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.[49][50]
The San Francisco Chronicle dubbed Cregger a "true horror auteur".[51]Empire gave Weapons 5/5 stars, marveling that Cregger seemed to effortlessly turn parental grief over missing children into a crowd-pleasing subject.[52] Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film 3.5/4 stars and deemed it superior to Barbarian, "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."[53]Variety praised the film, "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."[54]
Tim Grierson of Screen Daily felt the finale was "superbly orchestrated" and praised Cregger for "answering the riddles he has teased throughout the runtime".[55] Charles Pulliam-Moore of The Verge praised the film's meditation on "how communities often conjure up convenient boogeymen to blame, rather than confronting the things that actually endanger children."[56]
Tom Jorgensen of IGN scored the film 9/10 and called it "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."[57] The Associated Press gave the film 4.5/5 stars, "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."[58]
In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis felt Cregger's structure was not completely successful, "the segmentation and overlapping just feel like a whole lot of delay tactics."[59] William Bibbiani of TheWrap praised the cinematography for finding "the eeriest camera angle in damn near every scene, whether it's overtly shocking or insidiously banal", but he found the ending contrived, especially given how Cregger "invited us to ponder more powerful possibilities for over an hour before tipping his hand."[60]
Cregger discussed a potential sequel to Weapons in an interview with Variety, saying he was excited about the idea but wanted to make other films first.[67] In an interview with Fangoria, he said he had been discussing a concept for a prequel about Aunt Gladys with Warner Bros.[68]
↑Newspapers, LEE CLARK ZUMPE, Tampa Bay (October 16, 2025). "Scream-o-rama cinema 2025". TBNweekly. Retrieved October 16, 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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