2025's Scariest Movie Will Soon Stream on HBO Max — Why You Shouldn't Miss It

In 2022, former The Whitest Kids U Know member Zach Cregger shook audiences up with his twisty, subversive horror film Barbarian. In 2025, he’s back and has managed to up his own ante.

Weapons debuted over the summer to widespread acclaim and box office success. Told in a nonlinear format, the story follows the disappearance of a class of children in a small town, the fallout among the community and the search to uncover what really happened.

Finally, Weapons will make its streaming debut on October 24 on HBO Max. If you haven’t been convinced already, Watch With Us will explain why you’re gonna love it.

‘Weapons’ Weaves a Compelling Mystery

One day in Maybrook, Pennsylvania, seventeen students from Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) third-grade class run out of their homes at 2:17 a.m. and disappear into the night except for one — the quiet Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher). The disappearance of the children upends the small community, pointing fingers at Gandy, an outsider with an alcoholic past. The parents want both retribution and answers, and they need someone to blame.

This plot is unfurled out of chronological order, instead opting for separate chapters which each provide a different perspective of six different characters, all of which eventually intersect somehow: Justine, Marcus (Benedict Wong), a fellow teacher, Archer (Josh Brolin), the parent of a missing child, James (Austin Abrams), a local junkie, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), a police officer, and Alex, the remaining child. By utilizing this nonlinear, layered approach, the story and its many interlocking complexities are given a unique richness through the different viewpoints of each character. This also allows the story’s many secrets to be doled out in a slick, satisfying way.

The Themes Aren’t Heavy-Handed, Letting the Horror Take Center Stage

While some have viewed Weapons as an allegory for school shootings, Cregger himself has stated that the film was largely drawn from his grief surrounding the death of his friend. While it does still read as the emotional aftermath of a school shooting, Weapons is also an obvious commentary about fear of the other. The way suburban communities are quick to manifest outside scapegoats rather than consider for a moment that their problems may come from within — and may endanger their children.

Mob mentalities and mass hysteria are at the forefront of Weapons’ mind; in particular, those that foment in the otherwise prim and proper suburbs. However, many modern horror movies “actually about something” often fall victim to the type of heavy-handed “it ‘s-actually-about-trauma” stuff. These frequently squander the horror in favor of overwrought themes bludgeoned over your head like a club. But Weapons knows that it’s a horror film first, and so it needs to be effective and, well, scary. The thematic considerations are expertly woven into the film’s subtext, while Cregger crafts elegant scares, an eerie atmosphere and a pervasive sense of dread.

The Movie’s Director Was Inspired by an Unlikely Source

Barbarian was a memorable hybrid of horror and comedy that made audiences laugh out loud while still managing to terrify them. While Weapons might actually be funnier (largely due to the performance of Austin Abrams), it’s also far more ambitious in its genre-blending. Weapons is doing a lot more than just being a horror film with comedy elements. For one, Cregger has been open about drawing inspiration from an unlikely source — Paul Thomas Anderson’s film, Magnolia.

Magnolia is an unwieldy drama film with a similar sprawling narrative and overlapping perspective structure (and very similar opening sequences, too) to Weapons, which also succeeds as affecting character drama. The film combines pressure-cooker tension, mystery, deeply disturbing horror, and sharp black comedy, too. It sounds like it shouldn’t work, and yet Cregger manages this high-wire act with skill. It should be said that Cregger’s background in comedy likely gives the director a leg up when it comes to combining the two genres, but it takes a true artist to balance even more.

Weapons streams on HBO Max on October 24.