Body horror is a global marker of a good horror movie. Where there is blood, guts, and ripping skin, there is a real horror movie. David Lynch did it in 1977 with “Eraserhead,” Coralie Fargeat did it in 2024 with box office hit “The Substance,” and Zach Cregger just did it and gave the world body horror medallion “Weapons.”
Released on Aug. 8 2025, “Weapons” was one of the most anticipated movies of the summer. The movie stars Julia Garner, Amy Madigan, Josh Brolin, Benedict Wong, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams and Cary Christopher as Justine, Gladys, Archer, Marcus, Paul, James and Alex, respectively.
The film opens with the voice of a young girl who details the strange and unexplained disappearance of 17 kids from the local elementary school. All 17 kids were members of the same 3rd grade class–Justine Gandy’s class–and they all ran out of their houses at 2:17 in the morning and never came back. Nobody knew where they went or why they left. What they did know was that almost every child from one class went missing without a trace; almost. One child remained in the classroom the morning of the disappearance and his name was Alex Lily.
Justine is interrogated by the community, who grill her and accuse her of being complicit to the vanishing of the children. Alex’s parents are M.I.A. and he’s gone quiet, not participating in anything. A father of one of the missing children, Archer, takes it upon himself to investigate the curious happenings and finds that all the kids were running in the same direction, towards one specific area; towards Alex’s neighborhood.
Archer has it out for Justine and he investigates her in a gas station/liquor store parking lot. During this interaction, Justine is charged by a bloody and rabid looking Marcus, the school principal. This is where the body horror really starts. The film breaks down the story by placing the narrative in the perspective of all the different main characters. In Marcus’ exposition, we find out that he was approached by Alex’s aunt Gladys, who was staying with the family while she was sick with what appeared to be cancer.
Gladys comes to Marcus’ house one day and asks for water. While inside, she performs some kind of black magic that turns Marcus into a killing machine. He first kills his partner by smashing his skull in with his own. Shown is the bloody, concave, cavity of his partner’s head as Marcus, with bulged eyes and a gory face, returns his focus to Gladys. Gladys then tied a piece of Justine’s hair around a thorned branch, picked her own finger and smeared the blood on it, and snapped the stick in half. This causes Marcus to run out the door, through the city, and to Justine.
Back in the parking lot, Archer helps Justine escape and Marcus is smashed by a car in the middle of intersection as he chases Justine’s car down. Laying on the asphalt is Marcus, face blown off and brains splattered on the ground beside him. The sight is nefarious and nauseating. The film wasn’t necessarily advertised as a body horror film, so upon first watch, this can be very surprising.
Two other characters who coincide with one another are James and Paul. James is the neighborhood junkie who breaks into people’s homes, steals their things, and sells them for drug money. Paul is a police officer in the city who also happens to be Justine’s on-again-off-again situationship. He comes across James trying to break into a building one day and chases him down. He ends up getting pricked by one of James’ needles and, due to a deep fear of AIDS and Hepatitis, he punches James in the face. When he realizes that his DashCam caught the blow, he tells James to stay away from the station.
During James’ adventures away from the precinct, he comes across Alex’s house, which is seemingly abandoned with newspapers covering the windows, and, thinking it’s empty, he breaks in through an upstairs window. He finds the parents unmoving on the couch, so he embarks on his robbery embargo. He goes down into the basement where he finds all 17 missing children lined up in rows and columns. He sprints out of the house and runs to the police station to tell them what he found. When Paul sees him coming he chases him down again. James finds his camp in the woods but on the way, he sees a strange woman with an orange bob waving him down–Gladys. He zips himself into his tent and he stabs whoever comes to open it with a fork. He stabs Paul again.
James then takes Paul to the Lily home to show him what he found. . When they get there, Paul leaves James in the car and he never comes back. The film climaxes after this point. Justine makes it to the house in the morning, where Gladys has weaponized those she has under her spell. Alex runs from his parents, who tear through walls and doors to kill him. Justine and Archer run from Paul and James who never seem to tire. Justine ends up shooting both Paul and James to save herself and Archer. When they go into the basement they find the children, Archer desperately searching for his son; Matthew.
Upstairs, Alex has taken some of Glady’s hair, wraps it around a stick, pricks his finger, and snaps the twig. The children then make a break and chase Gladys through the neighborhood. They break windows and hop fences until they tackle Gladys and literally tear her limb from limb. The camera gets close-up shots of her arms and legs being torn from her body and her jaw being ripped apart; it’s a hideous sight. All the children get reunited with their parents but it takes years for only a few of them to speak. Alex’s parents are left with permanent damage and he goes to live with another aunt–one who’s actually a kind lady.
This was one of the best original horror movies I’ve seen in a long time. Cregger states that this film is an allegory for his alcoholism and his grief after the loss of his best friend Trevor Moore. Each character is supposed to represent the different emotions and experiences Cregger went through and he happened to write them into a masterful piece of horror media. It was refreshing to see something so personal but also so creative, since we seem to be in the era of the remake, sick with nostalgia. If you haven’t seen “Weapons” yet, step into the vault and experience it for yourself (don’t forget a barf bag).
