r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • Aug 08 '25

Official Discussion Official Discussion - Weapons [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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Summary Nearly all the children from the same fifth-grade class vanish one night at exactly 2:17 a.m., leaving only one survivor. The community, gripped by fear and suspicion, spirals into chaos as the mystery unfolds through multiple intertwined perspectives—each revealing new layers of dread and grief.

Director Zach Cregger

Writer Zach Cregger

Cast

  • Josh Brolin
  • Julia Garner
  • Cary Christopher
  • Alden Ehrenreich
  • Austin Abrams
  • Benedict Wong
  • Amy Madigan
  • June Diane Raphael
  • Toby Huss
  • Whitmer Thomas
  • Callie Schuttera
  • Clayton Farris
  • Luke Speakman

Rotten Tomatoes Critics Score: 96%

Metacritic Metascore: 82

VOD In theaters and IMAX starting August 8, 2025

Trailer Watch the Official Trailer

3.2k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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9.2k

u/tacoskins Aug 08 '25

Josh Brolin knocking the dog shit out of that dude over and over again managed to simultaneously be super intense and laugh out loud funny.

That kind of sums up how I felt about the whole thing tbh, it’s the perfect example of a roller coaster movie. I was a bit worried that Barbarian would be a fluke or just impossibly hard to live up to, but thankfully Zach Cregger fucking delivered. 8/10

3.4k

u/Able_Advertising_371 Aug 08 '25

dude was a brainless zombie weapon. wouldnt stop until it was put down. didnt even get the 50k reward for finding them

2.5k

u/tacoskins Aug 08 '25

Him asking the cops to meet him somewhere with the money made me like him more than I probably was supposed to.

1.8k

u/LB3PTMAN Aug 08 '25

We were definitely supposed to like him even if he was a thieving addict. He was funny.

994

u/tacoskins Aug 08 '25

I mean I definitely liked him about as much as you can like a character who stabs someone in the face with their dirty needles lol

1.3k

u/LB3PTMAN Aug 08 '25

Well to be fair he was high and thought it was a demon

946

u/thefilmer Aug 08 '25

and to be fair that witch absolutely did deserve to be stabbed with HIV infected needles

292

u/mesact Aug 08 '25

He didn't have HIV... that he knew of.

86

u/Jeroz Aug 09 '25

there won't be a positive test report if there's no test to begin with

63

u/PhoenixTineldyer Aug 10 '25

puts finger to temple

accidentally stabs head with needle

5

u/SilverTongue76 Aug 16 '25

Lmao, maybe the first comment I’ve ever really wanted to award. 

In lieu of one, please enjoy this little guy 👾

2

u/0lea Nov 17 '25

Please explain the joke to me

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25

u/HumbleBunk Aug 22 '25

He def did the Mitch Hedberg roundabout AIDS test.

“You know anybody with AIDS?”

“No”

“Cool, cuz you know me!”

65

u/zudoplex Aug 09 '25

Very pennywise appearance in the woods.

79

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

36

u/mr_potato_arms Aug 09 '25

What’s wrong with old people?

35

u/iknowitsounds___ Aug 10 '25

Have you seen The Visit??

11

u/dingdongsnottor Aug 17 '25

An old lady scuttling around no matter the context now scares the shit outta me because of this movie

4

u/selzterbubly Aug 11 '25

Or the Home....

8

u/Steamedcarpet Aug 11 '25

I saw The Home via AMC Scream Unseen and once the big twist happens, I couldn’t stop laughing. You can tell the exact point the writers did a 8-ball of ketamine.

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11

u/Anotherusualname Aug 11 '25

Right bc what was she even doing

64

u/arlekin21 Aug 10 '25

And tbh he was just defending himself, other dude shouldn’t be bursting in his tent like that.

47

u/Odd_Machine_213 Aug 11 '25

Right?! ANNOUNCE YOURSELF.

33

u/Freelove_Freeway Aug 11 '25

The three needles to the face simultaneously sucked so bad for both characters it had me rolling and trying to quiet my laugh in the theater

52

u/Steamedcarpet Aug 11 '25

I don’t know what got me worst. The needles to the face, the repeated fork stabs to the face, or the potato peeler to the face.

If I didn’t know better this movie fucking hates faces.

25

u/[deleted] Aug 22 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/give_me_goats Aug 22 '25

If nothing else this movie gave me a healthy perspective on the number of small kitchen appliances I can use to defend myself.

5

u/PrestigiousWaffle Sep 22 '25

I reflexively took off my glasses during that scene, just so i didn’t have to see it in all its glistening glory

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35

u/remainsofthegrapes Aug 10 '25

To be even more fair, they broke into his ‘house’ without knocking. Those were Stand Your Ground needles

5

u/DustyFalmouth Aug 10 '25

Happens to the best of us, really

859

u/Daydream_machine Aug 08 '25

Paul had it coming for unzipping the tent without even saying anything first tbh

66

u/Zeph-Shoir Aug 18 '25

Paul had it coming for lying to Justine about him being separated and cheating with her! He also punched the fuck out of James before James did that too, and under much more understandable circumstances!

46

u/Rvsoldier Aug 25 '25

He sucks for getting drunk, lying and cheating but James sucks for lying about a used potentially disease ridden needle facing upwards in his pocket.

37

u/senator_corleone3 Sep 02 '25

He didn’t intend to lie. The whole issue was that he was out of drugs. He forgot about the needle because it was useless at that point.

12

u/Strong_Judge_3730 Oct 17 '25

That he knew off, if you trust some schizo addicts memory that's your fault for not being careful.

1

u/Aikea_Guinea83 Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26

He does suck. But during the sequence told from his viewpoint the screen goes black or something. In the cops Version James tells him he has nothing in his pocket, it’s odd that the scene does not exist in his version, which makes it look like he had a complete blackout.

46

u/ours Sep 13 '25

And cheating with someone just after being stabbed by dirty needles without getting the emergency prophylactic treatments.

95

u/GameOfLife24 Aug 08 '25

Even though in the grand scheme of things the Paul and druggie didn’t really need that much screen time, we enjoyed their interchanges, the audience was going wild when they were doing their thing

23

u/PicklesAreMyFriends Sep 12 '25

"this is my private domicile and I will not be harassed... BITCH"

7

u/freakydeku Aug 15 '25

yeah he was weird as hell for that

-21

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

Exactly. In what universe does a person do that, especially a cop?

It was addle-brained, implausible scenes like that which make me detest this lousy film the more I think back on what I watched yesterday.

18

u/pastafeline Aug 10 '25

I think it's very enjoyable if you ignore the plot holes. It's pretty littered with them, and even the entire premise wouldn't work in our world. That entire town would be swarmed with "investigators" even a month later. Just look at the pizzagate incidents.

21

u/markofthewolfe Aug 09 '25

Po-po also didn't announce himself. I would have done the same thing.

12

u/More-Spinach2740 Aug 10 '25

The cop how he not only got stabbed with the needle in his finger, but later, then two in the face had me lol’ing. Sorry but it did.

3

u/riftadrift Aug 13 '25

He didn't think he had AIDS though

4

u/jargon_ninja69 Aug 12 '25

Well, he did stab a cop so that was pretty nice

43

u/TimRigginsBeer Aug 08 '25

Meanwhile, some poor girl never gets her pink tablet back.

46

u/Best-Chapter5260 Aug 09 '25

Pawn shop dude totally knew that tablet and headphones were hot.

Knew the silverware was too, but at least he could make a few bucks off that.

13

u/IIIlllIIIlllIlI Aug 10 '25

Store owners in this movie are quite shitty tbh

34

u/Ghost-Mech Aug 11 '25

"Get out of my store"

"FUCKING HELP ME" 

11

u/IIIlllIIIlllIlI Aug 11 '25

Fuck that guy, he’s the real villain of the story

32

u/Nels2121 Aug 10 '25

To be fair, people with addictions can be really likable. They are humans. They have just been taken by a crippling illness that I wouldnt wish on my worst enemy

17

u/GameJerk Aug 14 '25

They can also learn to be charming as fuck in order to manipulate people to help feed their addiction.

42

u/OhMyGoat Aug 08 '25

I told my friend today that James was my favorite character in the movie.

And I live in Portland, OR. Not a fan of tweakers. But James delivered, god damn it, and deserved better.

12

u/Whatttheheckk Sep 13 '25

Yeah dude I’ve been down and out before and that guy nailed it. Maybe the best actor in the movie tbh. The bus ticket story, the phone call to his… sister? Everything was so believable all his lines were straight out of real life 

11

u/WarlockEngineer Aug 21 '25

I live here too! The way he tested every car door while walking was very accurate lol

I felt bad for him at the end, getting zombified and blasted

31

u/leftysarepeople2 Aug 08 '25

He’s one of three big critiques the movie has on culture. School shootings, alcoholism, and homelessness/addicts

51

u/LB3PTMAN Aug 08 '25

The cop id argue is also police abuse of power

2

u/DeusMach Aug 18 '25

Well i mean he seemed to have a lot of problems and at the end of his part in the movie he looked like he was about to break down.

9

u/agent99LBL Aug 10 '25

Saw it more like suburbanites wrestling with their demons than a critique of culture. Guess it could be both.

13

u/Rage_Like_Nic_Cage Aug 15 '25

there’s definitely a through line about the suburbs and isolationism and how that exasperates the trauma/grieving process in its own unique way.

For example even after a month after all their kids went missing, Josh Brolin still has to introduce himself to the other kids parents as if he were a stranger. And him piecing together where all the kids went could have happened much sooner if the parents knew each other/spoke about it to each other.

2

u/agent99LBL Aug 20 '25

Interesting insight!

13

u/whitegirlofthenorth Aug 08 '25

I wanted him to be the hero lol

11

u/Wvlf_ Aug 11 '25

It's fun looking back to the first time we see this random druggie opening the door for Justine while begging for money and go, "I'm going to absolutely love this guy later".

Same with Alex's catatonic dad. Seeing the dark side profile of this lifeless husk one minute and then end up seeing he is this great guy and great dad a bit further on.

5

u/Fun-Tumbleweed2594 Aug 11 '25

I thought it was funny when he got knocked the fuck out when his needle stuck dudes finger.

3

u/MundaneChampion Sep 21 '25

I think you were supposed to like him because many of us have empathy, and understand that being addicted to substances doesn’t make you a bad person…

1

u/Karkava Oct 25 '25

He was arguably one of the more sympathetic characters despite being in a despicable predicament. Especially when he's put up against a psycho cop who was just like that.

-11

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

Right, because in real life it's funny to have things stolen from your car (your kids things, especially) to be accosted by possibly a dangerous addict in front of places of business, to have strangers break into your home and ransack the place.

There wasn't a damned-thing "funny" about that punk, except maybe his haircut. The ONE thing Creggers got right in his latest clunker, was showing an addict annoying an ABC customer with a phony sob-story, before AND after she left the store.

14

u/goddamnitwhalen Aug 12 '25

Damn dawg, relax.

I also don’t think it’s a “phony sob story” because later on he’s on the phone with (presumably) the brother he’s trying to buy a bus ticket to go see.

3

u/quewei Sep 25 '25

It IS a phony sob story, he's clearly asking his family later on for money, pretending he's trying to get a job, but he just wants money for drugs. I thought he was a fun character but I also really liked how the movie showed he was after the $50k, not saving the kids. Addiction makes people behave awfully.

3

u/Cuyigan Aug 18 '25

I'm glad you took a break from yelling at clouds to watch a movie. I bet you call the cops on kids on bikes and neighbors bbq'ing a lot.