The Weapons Trailer Teases What Might Be The Scariest Movie Of 2025

When Zach Cregger's fiendishly twisty horror film "Barbarian" stunned Hollywood in 2022 by grossing $45.4 million against a $4.5 million budget, every studio in town was eager to make whatever movie next sprouted from the writer-director's imagination. This wasn't because studios were looking to duplicate the low-budget success of "Barbarian." No, this was all about getting into a hopefully long-term business with an exciting new voice in horror who's likely just barely scratched the surface of his potential.

Ultimately, New Line Cinema won a multi-studio bidding war for the rights to Cregger's "Weapons," the premise of which has been shrouded in secrecy for months. All we knew for a while was that the film centers on a bizarre incident in which 17 children in a small Pennsylvania town spontaneously flee their houses at 2:17 AM, sprinting off into the night and never returning.

And they never came back...

— Warner Bros. (@warnerbros) April 29, 2025

New Line complemented the release of the deeply spooky "Weapons" teaser with the launch of a website that contains fake news stories about the town and the characters to whom we'll eventually be acquainted. (One of the bits on this site even suggests that "Weapons" might be set in the same universe as "Barbarian.") A week after that, the studio debuted a few images via Entertainment Weekly. In an interview with the outlet, Cregger revealed that the film is about more than these missing children, teasing:

"That mystery is going to propel you through at least half of the movie, but that is not the movie. The movie will fork and change and reinvent and go in new places. It doesn't abandon that question, believe me, but that's not the whole movie at all. By the midpoint, we've moved on to way crazier s*** than that."

We know from "Barbarian" that Cregger loves to pull the rug out from under his audience. How wild can "Weapons" possibly get? Let's look for clues in the trailer that just debuted online.

Okay, if the actual movie is even half as messed-up and unsettling as this "Weapons" trailer, then we're in for a real treat. True to his word, it appears Cregger has made a film that starts out with a real-life nightmare scenario for any half-decent parent before taking a hard right-turn into gonzo horror movie territory. It also looks like Julia Garner — who stars as Justine Gandy, the unassuming grade school teacher who's horrified to learn all the aforementioned missing children were from her classroom — will get a much meatier role to play here than she did as the wife-in-distress in "Wolf Man" earlier this year. That's not exactly shocking ("Barbarian," after all, was a great showcase for its own leading lady, Georgina Campbell), but it's welcome all the same, especially since we're aware Garner is capable of commanding the screen courtesy of her acclaimed prior collaborations with Kitty Green on "The Royal Hotel" and especially the pair's #MeToo workplace drama "The Assistant."

Putting that "Barbarian" success to good use, Cregger has assembled a top-notch cast to support Garner here, starting with Josh Brolin as Archer Graff, the father of one of the missing kids. The trailer also features quick appearances by the likes of Benedict Wong and Alden Ehrenreich, with up-and-comer Austin Abrams ("Wolfs") and tried-and-true screen veterans such as Toby Huss ("Halt and Catch Fire") and Amy Madigan ("Field of Dreams") rounding out the ensemble. Assuming Cregger gives them all roles worthy of their talent, he may yet realize his ambition of making what he's described to EW as his answer to Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia." In his own words:

"I just like that kind of unapologetic, 'This is an epic.' I love that movie. I love that kind of bold scale. It gave me permission when I was writing this to shoot for the stars and make it an epic. I wanted a horror epic, and so I tried to do that."

"Weapons" charges into theaters on August 8, 2025.