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From the get-go, writer-director Zach Cregger aims to get under your skin.

A child narrator sets up the “true story,” in which “a lot of people die in a lot of really weird ways.”

The unseen youth is not wrong.

Before we get to those deaths, we’re presented with Weapon’s central mystery through enduring imagery: 17 children in the small town of Maybrook wake up one night at precisely 2:17am. They all rush out of their bedrooms and run off into the night, arms outstretched in a particularly eerie fashion – as if they were flying off to Neverland. They are never heard from again.

Why did the kids vanish en masse?

A kidnapping? A prank gone wrong? Mass hysteria? An updated case of the dancing plague of 1518 – with less dancing and more disappearing? The whole community is baffled by this terrible riddle, and tempers are rising among the grieving parents – like Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), whose son has gone missing.

Things aren’t helped that all 17 children were part of the same Maybrook Elementary School classroom, led by Justine Gandy (Julia Garner). Suspicion quickly falls on the young woman, who is a caring teacher, enjoys a good swig of vodka every now and then, and finds the word ‘WITCH’ painted on her car in red.

Despite the pitchforks brandished by the townsfolk, she’s just as confused as everyone else. Ignoring the warnings from the school head Marcus (Benedict Wong), she decides to investigate.

You see, her classroom has 18 pupils. Which means that one boy, Alex (Cary Christopher), was spared…

Cregger’s second feature film after 2022’s Barbarian is not the easiest to review, as to go into too much detail about what makes Weapons work would be doing it (and future audience members) a great disservice. It’s really worth going into it willing to be blindsided.

Safe to say that Cregger skilfully employs a Rashomon-style narrative construction to craft a distressing fairytale that starts off as a small-town mystery thriller with shades of Twin Peaks and Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners. And his novelistic approach pays off, as it only furthers quite how much Stephen King must be green with envy that this suburban US nightmare isn’t his baby.

The episodic construction allows Cregger to ratchet the dread, as each chapter follows a different character POV – Justine, Archer, local cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), hapless drug addict James (Austin Abrams), Marcus and finally Alex – and work as intersecting clues. Only as the sinister jigsaw pieces fall into place do you realise the meticulous nature of Weapons’ structure, and that the time-hopping exercise is anything but a cheap gimmick.

Again, to reveal where it all leads and anything about a third-act character – a tricky role played to perfection by Amy Madigan – would be to detrimentally spoil.

Mark these words: you’ll remember her.

Throughout, Weapons benefits from an unnerving use of silence and open spaces, some terrific camera pans and unbroken takes, as well as earned jump scares. Moreover, a majestic feather in its cap is its rather startling tonal playfulness.

As Cregger moves away from the Brothers Grimm / Pied Piper-tinged enigma and embraces some dreamworld imagery – one hallucinated armament apparition in particular is as bizarre as it is metaphorically haunting – he also introduces sight gags and a smattering of gallows humour.

Granted, the bleak comedy was there to begin with, as the doorbell video camera footage of the kiddies rushing away from their homes is soundtracked to George Harrison’s ‘Beware Of Darkness’; but the gleefully macabre levels are upped considerably towards the end of the film. Whether it’s a well-timed expletive from Brolin’s character after a fright or the grand guignol and slapstick-sensitive finale, Weapons reveals itself as surprisingly cathartic.

It’s quite the feat.

When the film goes for scary, it’ll make you jump out of your skin.

When it decides to crawl under said skin, it’ll make you meditate on the “weapons” and “targets” in even the most seemingly safe all-American suburban spaces, and how paranoia can be… well, weaponised.

When it goes for gory, even hardened gore-hounds will wince.

When it chooses to be funny and unexpectedly camp, it’s a demented riot.

And at the end of the day, no one’s going to be acting valiant when clocks read 2:17 anymore.

While some may take issue with how some questions are left unanswered and how the central mystery loses its serious edge once revelations do come, Cregger’s masterful offering proves that his hellish Airbnb in 2022 was no fluke.

More than that, Weapons has become the tense and deliriously entertaining horror film to beat this year. Considering 2025 has already been good to the genre, with Presence, Sinners, The Ugly Stepsister, 28 Years Later and Bring Her Back – to name but a few highlights – that should tell you plenty.

Once more, good luck if you happen to be awake at 2:17am.

Weapons is out in cinemas now.