"Weapons" Trailer: Julia Garner and Josh Brolin Star in Zach Cregger’s Chilling New Horror About a Classroom Mystery and Mass Disappearance of Local Children
When her entire class mysteriously disappears overnight, a schoolteacher (Garner) is left to confront her worst fears and the blame of an entire community.
So, why have horror movies increasingly become so popular in recent years? Sure, many horror thrillers, if done successfully, tap into societal anxiety and the fear of the unknown. The genre is also extremely visual in nature, attracting many talented filmmakers to explore and push boundaries. But above all that, it could simply be that horror movies today are nearly the only ones tackling current issues without feeling like they're wagging a finger at or talking down to the audience.
Take, for instance, Weapons. It’s the latest mystery horror film from Zach Cregger, the mastermind behind the 2022 horror hit Barbarian and most recently produced the darkly comic sex robot thriller Companion. Cregger, a sketch comedian before emerging as one of the premiere horror voices working today, brings a real sense of weight and intensity to his latest directorial effort, delving into a parental terror concerning children’s classrooms.
And with today’s sensationalistic headlines and a deluge of social media posts over the last few years condemning ordinary schoolteachers for their actions or inactions, it has fostered an exasperation over the well-being of young students. Have schools become the new place to fear, not from gun violence but from teachers? Have teachers become the new scapegoats for parents to blame for feeling out of step with the rest of the world? Now, here’s another question: when was the last time a movie (a movie trailer, no less) conjured up questions of this sort? Well, it wasn’t any recent superhero movie, that’s for sure. Horror is where it's at, not just for the scares, though it helps, but because these films actually feel like they're set in our world, featuring characters we know. And like it or not, they represent our nightmares, warts and all.
Julia Garner, coming off a terrific run in her Emmy-winning role as Ruth Langmore in the Netflix series Ozark, and who recently starred in the Blumhouse horror Wolf Man and will soon appear in The Fantastic Four: First Steps as Silver Surfer, stars in Weapons as Justine Gandy, an average schoolteacher at Maybrook Elementary.
One normal Wednesday morning, Ms. Gandy walked into her classroom, only to discover it was entirely empty. Where did her students go? It seems that the night before, at 2:17 a.m., every child from Ms. Gandy's class got up from their beds and started to walk out of their homes, as if they were all possessed by some strange spell. The children (17 in all) are now missing and haven’t been seen since.
Josh Brolin also stars in the film as Archer Graff, the father of one of the missing students. As one might expect, he’s utterly confused and furious at this inexplicable phenomenon. During a school town meeting, seen in the film's official full trailer, Graff stands up to scream at the school faculty: “I don't understand at all... Why just her classroom, why only hers?!” He directs his entire anger at Ms. Gandy, who, for all intents and purposes, is completely innocent.
Ms. Gandy is also traumatically haunted by what has happened, not only having intense nightmares of creepy ghostly children but now fearing she might actually lose her job and be blamed for something she had no power over. Perhaps, fear is more devastating than any weapon.
The film also features Alden Ehrenreich (Oppenheimer, Solo: A Star Wars Story) as a local police officer and Benedict Wong (The Martian, Doctor Strange) as Ms. Gandy’s boss, the Maybrook school principal who has asked her to take a leave of absence.
Others in the cast include Toby Huss, Austin Abrams, Amy Madigan, and June Diane Raphael.
Written, directed, and produced by Zach Cregger, Weapons is coming to theaters later in the summer, beginning August 8th. Just in time for kids to prepare their back-to-school routine.
Official Synopsis:
There’s something wrong in Maybrook...
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.
