Matthew Percefull
Zack Cregger splashed onto the scene with Barbarian in 2022. The horror debut was daring, hilarious, and wholly original. It immediately put all eyes on the young comic turned director. Audiences and the industry alike were impatient for what he would do next. The script for his next feature, Weapons, reportedly sparked a bidding war serious enough to get Jordan Peele’s manager fired. After Warner Bros. bought the rights, there has been some major buzz over this movie within Hollywood. For a while, there were a lot of murmurs with nothing to see. This week, we finally got our first full trailer for Weapons. And it looks absolutely nuts!
Weapons stars Julia Garner as a schoolteacher. After arriving at work to find her classroom empty, the entire town is sent into a frenzy over these disappearances. Josh Brolin joins the cast as the father of one of the missing children who believes there’s a conspiracy. The trailer doesn’t reveal much plot outside of this. We get a montage of unsettling images accompanied by creepy kid voice-overs and chaotic music. Weapons look perfectly creepy and feel pretty unpredictable at this point.
An entire classroom of kids disappearing into the night is a chilling concept. It presents a killer hook. Based on Barbarian, though, this initial premise is likely just our introduction to this world. Let’s not forget, Barbarian was marketed as an Airbnb horror-thriller. This sales pitch was accurate for about 30 minutes before it revealed itself as the insane genre bender it really was. Cregger even said in an interview that this mystery would lead us through about half of Weapons. This excites me as the tonal switch halfway through Barbarian is what makes me love that one so much.
The marketing for this film has been really clever and fun. Warner Bros. launched Maybrookmissing.com, a news site set in the universe of the film. It features “articles” about the fictional disappearances seen in this trailer. This is an immersive and cool way to get people excited. It reminds me of the analog horror style marketing campaign that Neon ran last year for Longlegs. It worked well for that film, and Weapons has the perfect premise for a mystery box marketing approach.
Original horror has had no shortage of auteurs recently. Cregger looks to join the likes of Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and Robert Eggers with Weapons. All the ingredients are here, and I honestly have full confidence he’ll be able to pull it off. Barbarian is one of my favorite horrors of the decade thus far. Weapons looks like the type of second feature you’d want after something so singular. It looks bold and new while still holding that Barbarian charm.
Directed and written by Zach Cregger and starring Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, and Alden Ehrenreich, Weapons will be in theaters on August 8, 2025.
