"Weapons" New Trailer: Julia Garner and Josh Brolin Lead a Town on the Brink After 17 Kids Vanish Overnight in Zach Cregger’s Suburban Horror Thriller
Julia Garner stars as a schoolteacher under fire when 17 kids from her classroom mysteriously disappears in this eerie thriller from the director of Barbarian.
There’s nothing more terrifying for a parent than not knowing what has happened to their children. There’s an unspoken agreement that when a parent sends their child to school, that child will be protected at all times. But if that agreement is not fulfilled, you can expect plenty of outrage, anger, and a desperate search for accountability.
But here’s the question: what if 17 kids from one particular classroom mysteriously rose from their beds at night and inexplicably left their homes under the noses of their parents? Sure, it’s a strange and unsettling phenomenon, but who is to blame in this instance?
Well, we know that the parents aren’t going to blame themselves. No, no, no. Someone will have to take the fall for this... and all fingers point to the schoolteacher. Because she’s the perfect patsy. She can be the face of failure, of negligence, of whatever the town needs to believe to make sense of the unthinkable.
This little frightening scenario seems to be the basic gist of the upcoming horror thriller Weapons. It’s a new, tense-filled mystery from writer-director Zach Cregger, the mastermind behind the 2022 horror hit Barbarian.
The film takes place in a sleepy suburban American town that feels as normal as one could imagine. But there’s a strange incident involving 17 schoolchildren, all from the same classroom. They’re missing, nowhere to be found. It seems that during the middle of the night, the children were caught on Ring doorbell and outdoor security footage fleeing their homes in a trance-like state.
Where did they go, and why did they leave in the first place? Extremely worried and distressed parents turn to the school faculty for answers. Soon, the anger is directed at the children’s innocent schoolteacher, as she instantly becomes the town’s scapegoat. Because weaponizing blame might be the only way the town can regain a sense of control.
Julia Garner, the Emmy-winning actress of Netflix’s Ozark and who recently starred in the horror thriller Wolf Man, takes on the role of Justine Gandy, the teacher in question. Now with a large target on her back, she explains to an auditorium filled with agitated parents that she “wants an answer just as bad” as they all do.
In this brand-new trailer for Weapons, her words don’t do much to calm the crowd or stop the whispers that maybe she knows more than she’s letting on.
“We're talking about 17 kids in one classroom!” an angry father stands up shouting. He is Archer Graff (played by Josh Brolin). He’s the father of one of the missing kids. “I want to know what happened in that classroom... Why just her classroom... why only hers?!”
“I love those kids,” Garner’s Mrs. Gandy is able to squeak out before the room erupts into pure chaos.
Presented as a “true story,” but not one that you would “find in the news,” writer-director Zach Cregger seems to be tapping into this new age of viral conspiracy, where a morsel of truth can blossom into a full-blown collective delusion as it festers through word of mouth—shared and spread faster than ever.
At one point in this new trailer, we see footage of a blood-drenched Benedict Wong, who plays the school principal. He is running across town, dripping from head to shoulders in blood, with his eyes bulging out in sheer panic. Could this mean the terror is spreading? Whatever happened to the children… is now happening to the adults?
Brolin’s Archer Graff is privately looking into the phenomenon, as is Garner’s Ms. Gandy, investigating the whereabouts of the missing children and the eerie circumstances surrounding their disappearance. What they may find, however, could be far more disturbing than either of them ever imagined—something that reaches beyond the classroom, beyond the town, and maybe even beyond reality itself.
Co-starring Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, and Amy Madigan, Weapons just might be the most unsettling psychological horror film of the summer.
The film is hitting theaters August 8th.
Official Synopsis:
From New Line Cinema and Zach Cregger, the wholly original mind behind Barbarian, comes a new horror/thriller: Weapons.
When all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.
