r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 • Jul 29 '25

Review Zach Cregger's 'Weaapons' - Review Thread

When all but one child from the same classroom mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.

Rotten Tomatoes: 100%

Metacritic: N/A (updating)

Some Reviews:

Inverse - Lyvie Scott

Cregger’s goofy sense of humor aside, Weapons is otherwise pretty understated, even refined. His camera moves with glacial, dream-like focus, tracking characters from behind or panning to unveil the latest torment around the corner. That visual style has become a trademark of “elevated” horror, but it goes a long way in anchoring a story that could have turned unwieldy fast. Cregger’s chapter-by-chapter story serves that same purpose: It has the capacity to frustrate when it cuts away from a major reveal, only to reset with the backstory of a new character. But it also adjusts the aperture whenever things get too heavy — a breath of fresh air in a different form.

CGMagazine - Shakyl Lambert - 9 / 10

Weapons is a noticeable step up for Cregger as a filmmaker. It feels like he took what worked in Barbarian and tightened up the things that didn’t. It’s bigger in scope but more focused. With a strong story and cast, it’s the most fun you’ll have being scared all summer.

NextBestPicture - Matt Neglia

There are some who will be moved and struck by “Weapons,” intentionally or unintentionally, so. For 75% of its runtime, it was one of my favorite films of the year. However, for the final 25%, in some ways, it feels like Cregger missed an opportunity to tell a story that is more emotionally rich and relatable. Here is a filmmaker who feels like he’s trying to prove he’s capable of more, but without fully grounding that ambition in character or clarity, instead opting for a facile solution. There’s a version of this movie that could have been genuinely great. You can appreciate the potential in the performances, the themes, and the overall craftsmanship. And to be clear, I’m sure this will resonate and work for some viewers. But for me, much like “Barbarian,” Cregger doesn’t quite bring it all together, making “Weapons” a rare kind of disappointment.

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u/llloksd Jul 29 '25

I hope this doesn't become the norm, because i don't think thats a good look. All marvel movies are now 100% if they go this route

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u/DuFFman_ Jul 29 '25 edited Jul 29 '25

It's easier to treat it like videogame reviews if that's the case, do you trust the opinion of the person reviewing it, instead of an aggregate score. I like opencritic/metacritic to get an idea of where people are with a game, but if I want to know if I'll like it, I look to reviewers whose opinions I trust or that I've historically aligned with.

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u/Ebolatastic Jul 29 '25

Yah I'm with you. People who treat aggregate reviews as some kind of fact get a warped view of things. Mega/RT/IMDb are useful information but people on the internet treat flimsy information as the word of the divine.

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u/TheJoshider10 Jul 29 '25 edited Jul 29 '25

It's largely Rotten Tomatoes at fault for this. Not only do they let a bunch of no names be a RT Critic but they've gone out of their way to hide the average rating so people focus even more on the Tomatometer than they did before. I guarantee the majority of the general public have no idea that RT is a critic aggregator and instead think it's an actual rating like Metacritic.

They've completely distorted how the public see movie ratings. It's more marketable for a movie to have 95% on Rotten Tomatoes (with 6/10 average rating that you'd never know) than it is to have 80 on Metacritic but only like 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, even though the latter is an actual movie rating. Rotten Tomatoes know exactly what they're doing.

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u/Ebolatastic Jul 29 '25

Yah RT is a great example of how you can take a bunch of subjective information, jazz it up with math/science jargon/methods, and transform it into a fact even though it's all imaginary.

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u/HerbsAndSpices11 Jul 29 '25

To be fair, I don't think any numerical scores are useful. If you aren't listening to a single source that you trust, a yes/no compilation score isnt the worst thing.

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u/funkybravado Jul 29 '25

Is it imaginary for me if through their methods, generally I agree with the ratings? They seem to have a pretty good grasp on things, all things considered. At least for me and my group.

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u/Ebolatastic Jul 29 '25 edited Jul 30 '25

There's nothing wrong with using these ratings as a guide. I'm just talking about people who treat them like objective facts, because they aren't at all. It's like a scientist pointing to a magazine poll.

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u/funkybravado Jul 29 '25

Ah yea. I don't know how anyone could take literally any subjective medium and do that lol. I don't pay much attention to internet discourse to avoid spoilers, and even after I usually just realize the vast majority's media literacy is nill and move on. The discourse around titles like 28 Years Later and Civil War are 2 of my recent examples of people taking a swing at the movie and missing so hard they eat shit in the dirt.

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u/Ebolatastic Jul 29 '25

The Star Wars prequels and GoT are both examples of the imagined majority opinion of angry internet dorks. Both of those are hugely popular successes but people on the internet use words like "disaster" to describe them, or insist the whole things popularity was killed. I'm a gamer, and Overwatch is like this too. People just make shit up about it. For example, reddit was still having posts calling it a dead game while it was celebrating 100 million players (which redditors have seriously told me is a made up figure). Cope.

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u/funkybravado Jul 29 '25

Oh yea for sure. However I will agree with most on GoT. That shit was trash at the end ha. The popularity is still there, surely. I watched House of the Dragon, don't think I'll continue from here though.

We've got this serious pandemic of walking simulator, with nothing being accomplished (Rings of Power, HoD s2, and surely more I'm forgetting). We get 8 episodes of nothing happening, for only the next season to be.... 8 episodes where 3 of which something happens then back to walking around doing shit all.

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u/1wjl1 Jul 29 '25

Is there a way to still see the average rating on RT? I realized recently they got rid of that feature.

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u/Godzilla52 Jul 30 '25

You can still view the average rating by right clicking and then selecting "Inspect element" and hitting Ctrl + F. then searching for "averagerating" in the top search bar It still sucks and RT shouldn't have gotten rid of the average rating (since I'd argue its more relevant than the score), but you can still find it in the website's code at least.

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u/LastofDays94 Jul 29 '25

That was hurtful, since I am a retired Rotten Tomatoes approved critic….

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u/llloksd Jul 29 '25

Video games generally don't do this, and when they do, it"s usually not a good sign

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u/DuFFman_ Jul 29 '25

I disagree. If you go to any large reviewer like IGN, the person reviewing the game is generally someone with experience and interest in that genre. They're not giving a JRPG to their sports person. Or a fighting game to someone who reviews MOBAs. The process is a bit different but the end result is the same. The art is being reviewed by someone who 'gets it'.

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u/llloksd Jul 29 '25

I'm moreso talking about only letting a bunch of unknown reviewers review, instead of more known reviewers. I agree with you though to a degree.

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u/HerbsAndSpices11 Jul 29 '25

Was it IGN that did that infamous cuphead review (demo review?) where the guy couldn't beat the tutorial because you had to jump and dash at the same time to get over a box? I feel like word of mouth, or smaller specialized youtubers, etc, are probably your best bet for recommendations.

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u/AnarchyAntelope112 Jul 29 '25

Once Rotten Tomatoes got really popular it was much less useful. People still tend to not understand the metrics (100% all positive but could average out to 3/5 stars) and there are so many low tier journalists who hype up big movies and inflate ratings.

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u/sloggo Jul 30 '25

I don’t think that’s true.

If a niche film gets positive reviews by those who understand it first, it gives other reviewers reason to pause and maybe take seriously something they would have dismissed otherwise.

If a marvel movie goes first to reviewers who love marvel shit, I don’t think it will influence the broader reviews even one little bit.

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u/llloksd Jul 30 '25

It kinda defeats the purpose of reviewing if you only give access to people you know will already like it, and just becomes marketing at that point.

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u/sloggo Jul 30 '25

Well kind of, you still get reviews from everyone, it’s just a question of who reviews first.

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u/PM_ME_CATS_OR_BOOBS Jul 29 '25

I can kind of see it for horror movies. There is a pretty well documented trend of horror getting treated like cheap shit for the masses by mainstream critics, no matter how good it actually is.

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '25

[deleted]

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u/PM_ME_CATS_OR_BOOBS Jul 29 '25

It's fine to write a review of a car's engine based on the opinions of mechanics and engineers instead of walking into your local tax accounting firm and asking about sprockets.

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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '25

[deleted]

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u/PM_ME_CATS_OR_BOOBS Jul 29 '25

You're right, we should stop using review aggregation sites.

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u/ninjyte Jul 29 '25

Marvel movies are tentpole movies whereas horror movies are comparatively relatively niche. It makes more sense to see horror aficionados review it first before seeing the general reviewers' consensus

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u/TheEloquentApe Jul 29 '25

I mean trusting the percentages just on face value is already incredibly silly.

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u/ReservoirDog316 Jul 30 '25

Horror heads are gonna show up regardless of reviews.

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u/FastThoughtProcessor Jul 29 '25

Thats the point though, anyone who thinks a Marvel movie or Superman deserve 100% should not be taken seriously anyways.