Zach Cregger’s latest horror film, “Weapons,” opens with a chilling premise: 17 children mysteriously disappear at 2:17 a.m. on a school night from Justine Gandy’s third-grade class in a sleepy suburban community. They run out of their homes, arms outstretched “like stealthy little airplanes,” leaving behind only one bewildered student, Alex. This intriguing start to a horror movie is made more unconventional by Cregger’s choice to let a local girl narrate the ostensibly supernatural events, raising questions about her perspective. The police and town officials are unable to solve the mystery, setting the stage for a narrative that embraces the successful horror subgenre of partial explanations, similar to films like “Hereditary” and “Longlegs.”

Building on his previous work, 2022’s “Barbarian,” Cregger significantly expands his sinister powers of suggestion in “Weapons.” He demonstrates a unique skill for revealing threats lurking behind seemingly innocuous environments, in this case, the Pennsylvania town of Maybrook, where the mass disappearance transforms mild-mannered parents into an angry mob. The film’s close-to-home setting and imperfect, relatable characters evoke the style of the best Stephen King movies. The unexplained absence of the children allows for various associations, from QAnon-style child predator conspiracies (tonally similar to Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners”) to the painful aftermath of a school shooting, with parents seeking answers, consolation, and blame. Josh Brolin portrays Archer Graff, a hot-tempered father whose son Matt is missing, who confronts Justine (Julia Garner) at a school meeting, implicating the teacher—a charge that resonates with real-world parents confronting school personnel.

Instead of following a single protagonist, Cregger splinters the mystery across six characters, each with their own distinct chapter. The story frequently rewinds, allowing key scenes to be replayed from different perspectives, providing fresh insights “through a glass darkly.” The core characters explored include the teacher (Julia Garner’s Justine), the parent (Josh Brolin’s Archer Graff), the cop (Alden Ehrenreich), the school administrator (Benedict Wong), and two other undisclosed individuals. These narrative shards fit together like an expertly designed puzzle, offering satisfying revelations as details, such as the identity of the person who scrawled “WITCH” on Justine’s car or the junkie’s (Austin Abrams) risky approach to the police station, click into place.

Throughout the film, Cregger intersperses glimpses of a character in smeared clown-like makeup, revealed to be Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys. Gladys’s appearance more than halfway through the movie, with her sloppy lipstick and uneven eyeballs, introduces an unexpectedly campy turn to the film’s initially grimly self-serious tone. This shift occurs as Cregger ups the ante, introducing an adult driven to homicidal acts by the same suggestive force that compelled the children to flee. While the film’s artfully oblique approach allows the audience’s imagination to run wild for much of its runtime, the eventual emergence of an inevitably limiting explanation causes “Weapons” to lose some of its edge. In the climax, the title's meaning becomes clear: the community is divided into “targets and weapons,” where even an impressionable child or a vegetable peeler can become dangerous. Regardless of audience reception to its darkly comic finale, Cregger crafts a cruel and twisted bedtime story reminiscent of the Brothers Grimm, designed to leave audiences unsettled.

Critically, “Weapons” has been lauded as a “fascinating thriller” and an “often funny and ferocious film” that maintains its intrigue until the very end. Its use of horror tropes, such as dream sequences and jump scares, is executed with “class and control.” Director Zach Cregger is noted for “truly let[ting] loose in the final half hour,” slamming “the foot on to the horror pedal,” leaving viewers with a furrowed brow and a palpitating heart, without neat explanations. Commercially, “Weapons” has been a significant success, retaining its top spot at the box office on Friday with $4.7 million, showing a strong hold with only a 37% daily drop and a 43% drop in its second weekend. The R-rated original has now surpassed $105 million in North America, securing its place as the 13th-biggest release of the calendar year.

In the broader box office landscape, “Weapons” faced competition as the summer season wound down. Netflix’s animated streaming hit “KPop Demon Hunters” made a notable move, potentially winning the weekend with a two-day sing-along theatrical release in over 1,700 locations, a significant strategy change for Netflix. “Honey Don’t!”, a lesbian noir from Universal’s Focus Features, debuted with $1.4 million on Friday and preview screenings, projected for a $3.2 million opening outside the top five. Disney’s comedy sequel “Freakier Friday” secured third place, adding $2.8 million on Friday and expected to hit $70 million by the end of its third weekend. “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” (Marvel Studios) took fourth with $1.6 million on Friday, bringing its domestic total to $252 million. Universal’s “The Bad Guys 2” projected for fifth with $5.1 million in its fourth weekend, aiming for a $66 million domestic total. “Nobody 2” from Universal, an actioner, looked to fall to sixth place with $3.5 million in its sophomore outing, for a projected $16.3 million domestic total. Other releases included Bleecker Street’s “Relay” and Vertical’s “Eden,” both debuting outside the top 10. A24 also re-released the Chinese animated epic “Ne Zha II,” which earned approximately $690,000 on Friday, despite being the highest-grossing film globally with over $2 billion worldwide.