When all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance. A film by Zach Cregger, starring Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Toby Huss, Benedict Wong, Sara Paxton, Justin Long, June Diane Raphael, Whitmer Thomas, Callie Schuttera, and Amy Madigan.

The film is narrated by a child (Scarlett Sher) who shares a true story from two years ago in the town of Maybrook, where many people died in inexplicably strange ways. However, the story never made it to the news because the town’s authorities were so embarrassed by their inability to solve the mystery that they covered everything up.

On a seemingly ordinary Wednesday at Maybrook Elementary, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), a first-year teacher, arrives at her classroom expecting another typical morning. But today is different because none of her students are there, except for a boy named Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher).

What Justine doesn’t know yet is that the night before, at exactly 2:17 a.m., seventeen of her students had simultaneously woken up, climbed out of bed, walked downstairs, opened their front doors, crossed their yards, and vanished into the darkness.

Soon, the parents learn that their children have gone missing, and they become devastated and frantic. The police deploy search teams and scour the area. All they can determine is that the children somehow left their homes at exactly 2:17 a.m., since many houses have security systems that were triggered when the kids went outside. Several children were captured on video by homes with surveillance cameras, each showing the same inexplicable footage of the kids running out into the darkness.

The entire school is temporarily shut down to allow for a thorough investigation, but authorities are unable to determine what caused the disappearances. Police question Alex extensively since he’s the only student who came to class that day, but they don’t get any useful information. Alex insists he has no idea what the other children were doing or where they might have gone. The police also question Justine repeatedly, but she maintains that she doesn’t know anything and that her students were behaving completely normally the day before they disappeared.

When the school is finally forced to reopen after nearly a month of investigation so the remaining students can resume their studies, the grieving parents, led by Archer (Josh Brolin), grow increasingly frustrated with the police’s inability to solve the case. They begin turning their suspicion toward Justine, questioning why only the children from her class vanished without a trace and believing she hasn’t told them the whole truth.

To avoid bad publicity and conflict with the other parents, Principal Marcus (Benedict Wong) decides to place Justine on administrative leave. Determined to find out what really happened, Justine asks Marcus for permission to talk to Alex, but Marcus forbids it, asserting that Alex has been traumatized enough by the scrutiny from both the press and investigators.

Later, police officer Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) meets Justine at a local bar after receiving her text. She convinces him to drink with her when she learns that he and his girlfriend Donna had a fight or presumably is on the verge of breaking up. Abby takes Paul to her home and drives him back to his car the next morning. Abby becomes upset when Paul insists that the police are doing their best to solve the missing children case, even though it’s been a month with no progress. She mentions that she’s become public enemy number one in the town and that someone even vandalized her car, painting the word “WITCH” in red on the side.

Justine decides to take matters into her own hands and follows the school bus to where Alex gets off in a suburban neighborhood. She then follows Alex on foot as he heads toward a large brown house. The door swings open as Alex approaches and closes behind him after he enters. Justine walks up to the front door and rings the doorbell, but there’s no response.

Curious, she circles around the house and discovers that all the windows are covered with newspapers. Eventually, she finds a window that isn’t completely sealed, leaving a gap large enough for her to peek through. To her shock, she sees two silhouettes sitting on the couch in the darkness, facing directly toward her.

Something feels deeply wrong. Justine calls Marcus and tells him everything she just witnessed, but he dismisses her entirely. Instead, he’s upset that Justine didn’t listen to his advice and says he will forget this conversation ever happened.

The next day, Justine returns to Alex’s house and waits in her car. As Alex walks by, Justine gets out and tries to strike up a conversation with him. Startled, Alex seems surprised by Justine’s unexpected appearance. He tries to brush her off, but when Justine persists, Alex screams at her, demanding that she stop following him. Alex then runs across the yard toward the front door, which opens for him and quickly closes behind him.

Shaken, Justine approaches the house and rings the doorbell. There’s no response, just like before, even after she repeatedly knocks. Undeterred, she returns to her car and waits patiently, hoping someone will eventually come out.

As night falls and Justine dozes off, the front door suddenly swings open. A female figure steps out of the darkness carrying a large pair of scissors. She moves toward Justine’s car and stops beside the driver’s window, but Justine remains asleep. The figure quietly circles around and slips into the passenger seat. Using the scissors, she carefully cuts off a chunk of Justine’s hair, collects it, and then silently retreats to the house.

The film shifts back to the beginning, but this time it’s told from Archer’s perspective. On the day before the school reopens, Archer inspects a house under construction and realizes they ordered the wrong color for the client’s door. Acknowledging his mistake, he offers to take the two heavy cans of red paint back to the store.

Later, Archer visits Police Captain Ed (Toby Huss) at the station to get an update on the investigation. Despite Ed’s explanation that they’ve followed up on every call and are aggressively pursuing every lead, Archer remains unsatisfied. He presses Ed, insisting the police are intentionally going easy on Justine and refusing to charge her as the prime suspect.

That evening, Archer follows Justine home, with two cans of red paint sitting in the bed of his truck. This implies that Archer is the one who paints the word WITCH across the side of Justine’s vehicle.

The next morning, as Archer leaves for work, something suddenly clicks. He’s watched the footage of his son Matthew (Luke Speakman) running away that night over a thousand times, desperate for a clue. Now, as his gaze sweeps the front yard, tracing Matthew’s path, he spots a distant radio tower. Using a map, Archer draws a straight line from his house to the tower, extending it across the entire map.

Convinced he’s onto something, Archer visits Erica (Sara Paxton) unannounced, asking to see her ring camera footage from the night her son vanished. Erica refuses, saying she’s not comfortable with that.

Archer waits in his truck until Erica’s husband Gary (Justin Long) arrives home. He then asks Gary for permission to view the footage, which Gary grants. From this new footage, Archer maps out another trajectory, draws a second line, and discovers an intersection point.

Later, Archer confronts Justine at the gas station. While they’re having a heated argument, Marcus suddenly appears, running from across the street and attacking Justine.

At the station, Officer Paul is on the phone with Captain’s daughter, Donna (June Diane Raphael). She asks him to tell her father that she’ll be back this weekend, just in time for her parents’ anniversary lunch, which they’ll both attend. The film reveals that Paul is still living with Donna.

While cruising the streets on patrol, Paul spots a man using a crowbar to jam open a window in an alley. Paul grabs his PA mic and makes an announcement. The man is startled and quickly sprints toward the far end of the alley. Paul eventually manages to cut the man off and handcuffs him.

The man, named James (Austin Abrams), claims he works there and lost his keys. Suspicious, Paul is about to search James and asks if he has any weapons, drugs, or anything in his pocket that might stick his hand. James insists he doesn’t have anything.

However, when Paul runs his hand into James’s pocket, his finger gets poked by a needle. Paul loses his temper and swings a right cross into James’s head, instantly knocking him out. Realizing his action has been recorded by the dash cam, he warns James that he’ll let him go this time, but if he sees James again, there will be grave consequences.

At the station, Paul gives Ed the details of what happened. Ed then explains that as long as the incident isn’t reported, the footage will be recorded over in a month. He adds that if no one saw anything and James doesn’t show up to file a complaint, it could all just go away. Later, Paul receives a text message from Justine and goes out to meet her at a local bar.

The next morning, he returns home and freezes when he sees Donna’s bag. Apparently, someone on Donna’s trip got sick, so everyone was sent home early. When Donna asks where he’s been, Paul can’t come up with a lie, and she immediately senses he was out with Justine.

After being released by Paul, homeless drug addict James stumbles upon a large brown house with all the windows covered in newspapers. James finds his way in through an unlocked second-floor window. As he creeps through the house, focused on what he can steal, he doesn’t notice the man and woman sitting on the couch. James is startled when he finally sees them, but quickly realizes that they just sit motionless and don’t respond to anything, as if they’re completely zoned out.

James then continues to the kitchen, where he dumps a drawer full of silver utensils into the pillowcase he found earlier. Next, he opens a closed door that leads to the basement. There, he discovers a group of children standing perfectly still in complete darkness.

Moments later, Paul exits the station and spots James shuffling toward it across the street. James sees him and goes still. For a beat, the two men just stare at each other. Then James bolts. Paul races after him, finding him crouched inside his tent in the forest. He raises his shotgun. But stops when James screams that he knows where the missing children are.

At the grocery store, Marcus receives a call from Justine, who tells him what she saw at Alex’s house. Justine pleads with Marcus to do a welfare check, expressing concern for the child’s safety. Marcus eventually agrees to invite Alex’s parents to his office at school.

The next day, Gladys (Amy Madigan) visits Marcus in the principal’s office. Marcus is surprised, having expected to meet with both of Alex’s parents. He explains that he needs to speak with them directly, unless Gladys is Alex’s legal guardian, which she confirms she is not.

Gladys says she’s Alex’s aunt and is currently caring for his parents, who are ill. Marcus tells her that someone has filed a welfare complaint, and he must speak with Alex’s parents in person. He offers to come to their house if that would be easier, but otherwise warns that he’ll have no choice but to contact Child Protective Services.

Written and directed by American filmmaker Zach Cregger, WEAPONS is a supernatural thriller that revolves around a mysterious incident that shook an entire town. The story centers on 17 children who vanished without a trace at 2:17 a.m., initially believed to have run away from home.

The film is structured to show us the aftermath of a mysterious incident that nobody in the story understands (except the antagonist): what happened to the children or why they disappeared. There are no notes left behind, and it’s clearly not a typical abduction since each child ran out of their house on their own. When the investigation yields no results (surprisingly, even in this small town, the police dogs can’t find any trace of them), it becomes a witch hunt where the grieving parents point fingers and blame Justine, despite having no evidence that she was involved in the children’s disappearance.

While the premise is intriguing and unfolds cleverly through multiple perspectives like a good detective story, giving us clues to connect the dots along the way, it’s also weighed down by unnecessary jump scares and irrelevant nightmare sequences.

Every cast member delivers a wonderful performance, particularly Julia Garner and Alden Ehrenreich, although both of their characters are flawed humans who aren’t quite likable enough for me to root for them. I admit that I half expected Justine to turn out to be a real witch, but that’s not the case since she’s simply a school teacher. The cinematography, editing, and music are nothing short of incredible, which is exactly what I’d expect from the creator of BARBARIAN.

The most memorable aspect is Benedict Wong in the role of Marcus. I never thought he could play a character that’s truly terrifying, possibly even more so than the film’s actual villain.

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WEAPONS was theatrically released in the United States on 8 August 2025.