Even before its release, Zach Cregger’s follow-up to BARBARIAN caused waves in the horror community after a dramatic bidding war. Seventeen children run away from home at 2:17AM, and a month later, nobody knows where they went or why. Anchored by layered, messy characters, WEAPONS delivers both fear and laughter but the resolution is less enterprising than the initial idea, making it a better mystery than a horror.

With all of the missing children coming from her class, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) is vilified by a community that thinks she knows what happened to her class and doesn’t take the scrutiny well. Cowering from angry parents and turning to alcohol, she is haunted by the image of empty desks, with all but one kid in the classroom remaining.

The image of these children in their pyjamas, running with airplane arms by their sides, is striking and distinctive. As they speed through empty, moonlit suburbia into the darkness, an unremarkable neighbourhood is turned upside down. This image of the children has sold the film in posters and trailers, and Creggers’ imaginative premise has been backed up by great framing to draw the attention to the eerie nocturnal emptiness, and sound design that’ll keep audiences on the edge of their seats about what is lurking behind the trees the children run into.

Julia Garner has been the main face of this film, and she plays a brilliantly messy, complicated woman. Justine reminds viewers that teachers are people too, ones who make embarrassing mistakes and get into situations with a capital S. While the storytelling uses her character as the springboard, the narrative baton is passed to various characters, each introduced via title card: a local cop (Alden Ehrenreich), a concerned parent (Josh Brolin), the headteacher (Benedict Wong), an addict (Austin Abrams), and the remaining child (Cary Christopher). As their stories intersect, the tension builds as the audience are given tantalising details with every overlapping scene.

“WEAPONS works better as a mystery than a horror, even if the jumpscares are deftly set up. In giving the audience one too many answers, Cregger slightly undermines the ambiguity that makes other horror films truly great.”

The quality of the writing and the performances is maintained throughout, with each actor leaning into the earnestness and building chaos of the story, selling the twists but also reacting in ways that are both realistic and funny. This balance is where comparisons to Paul Thomas Anderson – an inspiration to Cregger – are more apparent, especially in the cat and mouse antics of Ehrenreich and Abrams.

WEAPONS works better as a mystery than a horror, even if the jumpscares are deftly set up. In giving the audience one too many answers, Cregger slightly undermines the ambiguity that makes other horror films truly great. There is little left to the imagination, which lends itself better to the denouement of a whodunnit; the intrigue stems more from the mechanics of the villainy. Rather than the setup, which promises insights into American suburbia and a modern child’s psyche, the resolution leans into the more tired tropes of BARBARIAN of a creepy old lady that dampen the originality. What promises to be a Shirley Jackson-esque upheaval of suburbia turns into a story more reminiscent of Roald Dahl’s The Witches, and using aging female bodies for grotesque shock value does feel dated in comparison to the innovation of the rest of the film.

That said, WEAPONS is still exactly the kind of suspenseful film that you want to see with an enthusiastic crowd. While the trailer focuses on Garner, who makes the most of her scenes, each new character adds additional flavours of personality to the movie, from innocence to unabashed selfishness. The performances are undoubtedly entertaining, but audiences are likely to be split over whether the conclusion and final approach are worthy of them.