Zach Cregger’s latest horror film, “Weapons,” begins with a chilling premise: at 2:17 a.m. on a school night, 17 children from Justine Gandy’s third-grade class in the sleepy suburban community of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, mysteriously vanish. They rise from their beds, open their front doors, and run out into the night, arms outstretched like stealthy airplanes flying low, leaving behind only a shy boy named Alex. This intriguing start sets the stage for a horror movie made all the more unconventional by Cregger’s choice to have a local girl describe the ostensibly supernatural events. The film immediately primes audiences for a mystery that will remain at least partially unexplained, aligning with a successful horror subgenre embraced by films like “Hereditary” and “Longlegs,” which thrive on ambiguity.

Coming off his brilliantly deranged 2022 film “Barbarian,” Cregger expands the scope and potency of his sinister powers of suggestion in “Weapons.” He demonstrates a unique skill for revealing threats lurking behind seemingly innocuous environments. In this case, Maybrook’s mass disappearance transforms mild-mannered parents into an angry mob. The close-to-home setting and its imperfect, relatable characters evoke comparisons to “the best Stephen King movie that Stephen King never wrote.” The film allows viewers’ imaginations to run wild, with interpretations ranging from QAnon-style conspiracies involving child predators (tonally resembling Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners”) to the painful aftermath of a school shooting, as parents desperately seek answers, consolation, and blame. These resonant phobias vibrate just below the film’s surface, lending “Weapons” its profound power.

Instead of focusing on a single protagonist, Cregger splinters the mystery among six people, dividing the narrative into distinct chapters. Each section rewinds, allowing key scenes to be replayed from a different character’s perspective, providing fresh insights “through a glass darkly.” The core characters include Justine (Julia Garner), the stressed teacher who is implicated by the town’s furious parents; Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), an angry father whose son Matt has gone missing, obsessively watching CCTV footage of his son’s departure; a troubled police officer (Alden Ehrenreich); a school administrator (Benedict Wong); and two others whose identities are better left undisclosed to preserve the film’s expertly designed puzzle. The pieces gradually click into place, from the identity of the person who scrawled “WITCH” on Justine’s car to the motive of the scuzzy junkie (Austin Abrams) who risks approaching the police station. Young Cary Christopher delivers a superb performance as Alex, the bewildered boy left behind, his flat answers and slow blinks contributing to the eerie atmosphere.

For more than an hour, the movie maintains a grimly self-serious tone, reinforced by Larkin Seiple’s steady-handed camerawork and a bone-vibrating score. However, an unexpected campy turn occurs with the introduction of Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys. All but unrecognizable behind her sloppy lipstick and uneven, disconcertingly smaller eye, Madigan’s character—described as Mary Poppins’ satanic stand-in—appears more than halfway through the film, blending humor and repulsion. By this point, Cregger has upped the ante, introducing an adult driven to homicidal acts by the same suggestive force that compelled the children to flee. Yet, as the audience starts to understand the underlying causes, the runaway ideas initially unleashed in our minds begin to narrow to a single, inevitably limiting explanation.

The violence escalates significantly in the home stretch, during which the film’s title becomes starkly clear: the community is composed of two types of people—targets and weapons. Practically anything, from an impressionable child to a vegetable peeler, can be rendered dangerous in the wrong hands. While Cregger’s artfully oblique approach allows imaginations to soar for three-quarters of the movie, it is only when the answer emerges that “Weapons” starts to lose some of its initial edge. Regardless of how one feels about the darkly comic finale, Cregger has crafted a cruel and twisted bedtime story reminiscent of the Brothers Grimm—not the sanitized Disney version, but one where characters kill on command and audiences find it difficult to sleep afterward, departing with a furrowed brow and a palpitating heart.

Beyond its critical reception, “Weapons” has achieved significant box office success, crossing $100 million domestically and reaching a worldwide total of $172.6 million. This is a remarkable achievement for a low-budget horror movie, produced for $38 million, which also held the #1 spot at the box office for two consecutive weeks. Its success contributes to a great year for original horror and for Warner Bros. specifically, marking another hit in a string of successful releases for the studio. Zach Cregger’s burgeoning career continues as he is set to adapt the popular horror video game “Resident Evil” for Sony, reuniting with “Weapons” star Austin Abrams in the lead role.