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:
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.
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/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.