It’s been a very strong year for horror, one of the most surprising and creatively charged in recent memory. Over the past decade, the genre was largely shaped by what came to be known as elevated horror, artful, slow burning films like Hereditary and The Babadook, where horror served as a framework to explore grief, trauma, and existential dread. These films pushed the genre into more critically respected territory, delivering some of the best performances of their time and turning director names into major draws… at least until some of those directors wandered off in search of more “serious” storytelling, with mixed results. (Ari Aster.)
Lately, though, things have shifted. A new wave is on the rise, a kind of pop horror renaissance, where the ambition and craftsmanship of prestige horror meet the mystery driven, high concept fun of mid 2000s genre filmmaking. These films still care about character and tone, often keeping the Oscar worthy performances of the prestige era, but they trade their deeper explorations of human psychology for a playful edge, eager to entertain, surprise, and get unapologetically weird. Themes might still be explored, but the focus is clearly on the spectacle. In a moment when much of Hollywood feels stalled, this embrace of unpredictability has made horror the most exciting genre around. And 2025 has already delivered two standout examples, Bring Her Back and Together, with Weapons now arriving as the strongest example of this thrilling new direction.
Zach Cregger’s follow up to Barbarian (an important film in this shift) begins with a chilling premise. Seventeen children, all from the same classroom, waking at exactly 2:17 a.m., leaving their homes, and running into the darkness, vanishing into the night. The film doesn’t offer an explanation, at least not right away, but instead fractures its story into chapters, each focused on a different character touched by the event. Some of them are directly connected; others seem completely unrelated. Each segment builds its own tension and tone before handing over a piece of the larger puzzle.
Cregger explored similar structural surprises in Barbarian, but here, the approach feels more refined and cohesive. The anthology like format allows the film to shift gears without losing momentum. One story leans into grief, another into paranoia, and things grow stranger with each new chapter. It keeps resetting and reinventing itself, while gradually forming a picture that is funnier and weirder than expected. And because the first half is grounded in quiet, human moments, the film earns the right to go wild in the second. When it finally lets loose, it feels like a payoff, not an abrupt rug pull.
Helping to ground all the absurdity, and smoothing out the tonal shifts, is a cast that is uniformly excellent. Julia Garner and Josh Brolin are the clear standouts, each bringing the emotional weight the story needs. Their characters seem to carry years of pain just beneath the surface, and both actors build empathy even as their roles veer into morally messy territory. But even the smaller roles leave a mark. A police captain, his daughter, a returning face from Barbarian, the school principal’s husband, they are all smartly used, even if they are only on screen for a minute. And no matter how strange the film gets, it never stops treating its characters as real people. There is a strong current of empathy running through it, whether we are watching a junkie unravel or witnessing the quiet tension between a teacher and the grieving father of a missing child. Where Barbarian sometimes lost sight of its emotional core in the chaos, Weapons holds onto it, only slipping slightly in the final five minutes when it suddenly feels eager to wrap things up.
The biggest step forward for Cregger as a director is how cohesive Weapons feels. Where Barbarian was built around a bold twist that surprised audiences but ultimately fractured the film, Weapons feels like a proper payoff. The surreal elemnts are seeded early, starting with that eerie image of the children running through the streets, arms behind their backs, as George Harrison’s “Beware the Darkness” plays. As the mystery begins to take shape, the film grows increasingly bizarre, loud, grotesque, and at times genuinely hilarious. A memorable sight of a gun floating above a rooftop like a huge alien starship, an old woman weaving in the woods, and hilariously awkward standoffs, one at a convenience store and another in a principal’s office, are all carefully woven into the narrative. These images and comedic moments never let the film feel too serious, even when the topic is trauma, helping set the tone for the absurd finale. The third act lets it all rip, horror, comedy, and drama colliding in a genre mashup that is as ambitious as it is entertaining. You might be laughing, wincing, and holding your breath in the span of a single scene. Cregger wants it to be unpredictable and coherent, and this time he pulls it off.
Despite the setup, Weapons isn’t all that interested in being a careful character study, though there are traces of that throughout. Some might wish the parents’ grief had more space to breathe, and the rushed final scene does feel like a missed opportunity for a closing gut punch. But instead of dissecting trauma, the film is more focused on entertaining, unsettling, and keeping you guessing. In that respect, it more than succeeds. Even if the final character motivation isn’t entirely original, the journey to get there absolutely is. Its tonal shifts, from grounded mystery to wacky nightmare, are handled with such confidence that they feel effortless. If Barbarian was a bold swing, Weapons is a smarter, tighter follow through, one that fixes most of the earlier film’s weaknesses while doubling down on its strengths. Maybe not as ambitious, but it lands cleaner, making it one of the most entertaining horror films of the year.