Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, and Austin Abrams reveal what they can without spoiling the whole thing. What is Weapons about? Cast sets up the ke

Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, and Austin Abrams reveal what they can without spoiling the whole thing.

What is Weapons about? Cast sets up the key players and shifting POVs

Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, and Austin Abrams reveal what they can without spoiling the whole thing.

By Nick Romano

Nick is an entertainment journalist based in New York, NY. If you like pugs and the occasional blurry photo of an action figure, follow him on Twitter @NickARomano.

EW's editorial guidelines

Published on August 6, 2025 10:00AM EDT

Leave a Comment

Julia Garner and Josh Brolin in 'Weapons'. Credit:

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

So much about the horror movie *Weapons* is shrouded in mystery. That's just the way writer/director Zach Cregger likes it. It's a trick he no doubt learned from his first feature film outing, *Barbarian*, which was sold as a story about a woman who arrives at her Airbnb to find it already occupied but left all of its more dramatic, twisty secrets for audiences to discover at the movie theater.

*Weapons* begins with a similarly cryptic premise: 17 children from Ms. Justine Gandy's class at Maybrook Elementary School in Pennsylvania all wake up simultaneously at 2:17 in the morning, quietly leave their respective homes, and run into the night never to be seen again.

"You don't want to lance the anticipation," Cregger tells **. "I don't think it's a spoiler to say that it's a structurally unique movie, but it's structurally unique in a way that's different from *Barbarian*. [With] *Barbarian*, when the structural changes happen, you feel disoriented and potentially like the movie has abandoned you. *Weapons* is not like that at all. *Weapons* is structurally unique and it shifts a lot, but you always feel like you know where you are. It's more about a gathering of momentum rather than a halt."

At the very least, we can say that, while the film may initially present Julia Garner as the lead (and, in many ways, she is), each of the core principals gets their time in the spotlight. EW spoke with some of those actors — Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, and Austin Abrams — to see what they can actually share about the film without spoiling it.

Julia Garner as Ms. Justine Gandy

Julia Garner as Ms. Justine Gandy in 'Weapons'.

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

As Ms. Gandy, Garner plays the elementary school teacher who arrives one morning to find every one of her students is absent — except for one, Alex (Cary Christopher). She becomes the focus of the town's ire as desperate parents start pointing fingers.

"She loves the children and she loves teaching and she loves her job," Garner describes. "I think her intention and her heart are very pure, but the execution is a little messy, to say the least." The actress, who also starred in horror projects *Apartment 7A* and *Wolf Man*, is referring to the character's alcohol use.

'Weapons' opening scene tells the origin of the movie itself — Watch exclusive clip

'Weapons' director thinks 'Napalm Girl' photo subconsciously inspired running pose (exclusive)

"I've always felt like she was a functioning alcoholic, or she *thinks* she's functioning, but then she realizes, maybe later in life, that she wasn't functioning as much as she thought she was," Garner adds.

The star used her own family as inspiration for the role. Her older sister, Anna, works as a teacher and gave her some pointers. "The lanyard that I was wearing in *Weapons* was actually my sister's," Garner says. "She was like, 'There *has* to be a lanyard. That's not believable otherwise.'"**

Josh Brolin as Archer Graff

Josh Brolin as Archer in 'Weapons'.

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

Brolin's Archer Graff is "a typical by-the-manual masculine bubble" of a person, the actor explains. "He is stuffed within himself. He's not very emotional. His son disappears, and he becomes active in trying to find his son, angry that people aren't doing their jobs in order to get those kids back. I think what he does is he taps into a part of himself that he wouldn't have otherwise."

The "chunks" of the different pieces of the movie "bleed over," Brolin notes, "which I love." With Archer, "you focus on his perspective and his frustration and his paranoia and his fear that ends up being fairly emotional and illuminating by the end," he continues. "I think Archer, more than anybody, goes through a full trajectory of what he was and the redemptive part of who he becomes."

Brolin remembers reading the script slowly for the first time, "which is a really good sign," he says. "Where some people will speed up, I'm a fairly quick reader, [so] I'll slow way down 'cause I don't want it to end. I was really taken by the design of this."

Alden Ehrenreich as Officer Paul Morgan

Alden Ehrenreich as Paul in 'Weapons'.

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

Ehrenreich's Paul is a local police officer who has a history with Ms. Gandy.

"He's at a place in his life where he is struggling to get by, and the events that happen push him to a different place," the actor explains. "The thing that I was haunted by when I first read this script was the level of depth that Zach wrote these characters at. It was really not something I'd read in any genre, much less in a horror movie. For all of these characters, I think they're broken, interesting, very complicated people."

Inspired by *Magnolia*, Cregger wanted a John C. Reilly-type cop figure in *Weapons*. Sure enough, Ehrenreich rocks a mustache similar to Reilly's facial hair in that 1999 drama.

"When we first talked, we were not gonna do a mustache 'cause that just felt like a go-to thing," he recalls. "Then I spent time with some cops, and a lot of them had mustaches. It's just the way filmmaking is. Zach saw it, and he went, 'Don't shave it yet.' Then we did a screen test, and by the end of it, we all were like, 'There's something alive here with the mustache, so we're just going with it.'"

Austin Abrams as James

Austin Abrams as James in 'Weapons'.

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

Another key piece of the puzzle is James, played by Abrams. "He really likes drugs a lot, and he doesn't really have a home," Abrams says. "He is always on the lookout for a new opportunity."

When the movie turns towards James, the audience will reach a "much more frenetic portion" of *Weapons*, he adds. "It feels like the start of the ramp [up] in the movie, maybe, or where things start to get a little bit crazier."

Abrams is one of the hangers-on among the cast. Cregger initially assembled a robust ensemble that included Pedro Pascal, Brian Tyree Henry, and Renate Reinsve before the Hollywood strikes delayed production, forcing the actors' schedules to shift. The filmmaker had to recast much of his movie, but Abrams stuck around.

*** Sign up for **'s free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.***

"I was working on another job, and I remember starting [to read] the scripts much too late and thinking I'll just read a little bit of it and go to bed," he recalls, "then not being able to stop reading it until, I don't know, 3 a.m. or something like that. I remember loving it and feeling excited by it."**

*Weapons* opens in theaters this Friday, Aug. 8, and everyone involved is hoping to preserve how all this plays out on screen until then. As Cregger says, the mystery about the missing children "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."**

Original Article on Source

Source: "AOL Movies"

Read More

---

Source: Astro Blog

Full Article on Source: Astro Blog

#LALifestyle #USCelebrities