Warning: Minor SPOILERS for Weapons to follow…
Zach Cregger’s latest film, Weapons, has finally arrived on 
HBO Max, and just in time before the Halloween season comes to an end. While the director has made other films like Miss March in 2009 and The Civil War on Drugs in 2011, it was his 2022 movie Barbarian that put the filmmaker on the map. Following the positive reviews and hype surrounding the horror film, Cregger returned to the genre with Weapons, a film subject to a bidding war before it ended up at Warner Bros. Released in August, the movie would also receive positive reviews, with plenty of discourse surrounding the film, specifically about its themes and greater meaning.
Weapons tells its story through a nonlinear narrative, focusing on the lives of six different characters who deal with the fallout of seventeen children going missing from a small town after running out in the middle of the night. Cregger plays with the traditional story format a lot in Weapons, constantly shifting perspective to different periods of time to continually keep viewers disoriented. The mystery of why the children went missing was a big part of Weapons’ marketing, and thankfully the answer didn’t disappoint the majority of fans. The incredibly creepy Gladys has now become a new horror icon, so much so that a possible prequel film about the character is being explored by the studio.
With how ambiguous Cregger has been about the meaning of Weapons and its ominous imagery (especially the floating gun in Josh Brolin’s character’s Archer’s dream), the movie is the perfect modern horror classic to discover or revisit this spooky season. Now that it is on HBO Max, fans of Cregger’s work can re-watch it as many times as they want to unpack its mysteries and greater meanings, even if the filmmaker doesn’t think there’s a concrete answer other than that it was his own way of processing grief. Moreover, it’s also a fun watch for those who haven’t seen the film yet, as the horror film is one that can keep viewers guessing until the very end.
‘Weapons’ is Already Dominating the Streaming Charts
The popularity of Weapons on HBO Max speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, Weapons is number one in the “Top 10 Movies Today” chart on the streaming platform, beating out two other horror hits that are undoubtedly on the chart because of their seasonal popularity. The A24 film Bring Her Back is currently at the number two spot, and the highly popular MUBI film The Substance is at number three. With a 93% on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes based on 373 reviews, Weapons is a film that shouldn’t be missed.
Cregger isn’t slowing down after Weapons, either. While his latest film is now available to watch on HBO Max, fans can get excited about his next movie, Resident Evil, an adaptation of the popular Capcom video game of the same name. Weapons star Austin Abrams is set to star in the movie, and while Cregger has kept most details under wraps, the director did reveal that it won’t be adapting any specific game, but instead telling an original story set within the world of the games.
- Release Date
-
August 8, 2025
- Runtime
-
128 minutes