Weapons, the new Zach Cregger horror film out this weekend, has arrived with high critic and audience scores. So high, in fact, it has set or tied a pair of records on that front.
As it stands, Weapons is the highest critic scored, theatrically released horror movie this decade, since 2020. At a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s tied with When Evil Lurks and Oddity with that same score, albeit those were far more limited releases and have fewer critic reviews in, making that 96% more impressive.
His House and Host, both films that are ranked above it with a 100% and a 99% respectively, were not theatrically released. His House is a Netflix horror movie, while Host was filmed entirely in COVID lockdown and released on horror platform Shudder.
Then, we can move to audience score, where as it stands, Weapons appears to have the top spot with a 90%.
While you may think critics are more prone to be harsh on horror movies than audiences, the opposite is true. Many of the top-rated horror movies have lower or much lower audience scores. There are only a handful close to Weapons, and many are well below it, despite being top rated by critics. Here’s a sampling:
- Weapons – 90% audience, 96% critics
- Companion – 89% audience 93% critics
- The Invisible Man – 88% critics, 91% audience
- Talk to Me – 83% audience, 94% critics
- Pearl – 83% audience, 93% critics
- Where Evil Lurks – 79% audience, 96% critics
- Oddity – 78% audience, 96% critics
- MEG3N – 78% audience, 93% critics
- Heretic – 76% audience, 91% critics
- X – 76% audience, 94% critics
- His House – 73% audience, 100% critics
- Host – 71% audience, 99% critics
- Barbarian (Cregger’s last film) – 70% audience, 92% critics
- 28 Years Later – 63% audience, 88% critics
- Longlegs – 61% audience, 85% critics
You get the idea, and I can’t list every horror movie since 2020, but at the very least, without question Weapons has the highest combined critic and audience score out of all of these, with barely any critic and audience disconnect, which is exceedingly rare, as you can see. An exception here is Sinners with higher scores on both fronts, but it’s such a genre-defying movie, I’m not sure you can consider it in the same category as these others on the list. It also may be heading for a Best Picture nomination.
Weapons is a must-see, it seems. I’m heading to the theater as soon as humanly possible, but the film is being praised as an excellent mix of harrowing horror and surprising comedy, which is something that did not exactly come across in its trailers. It’s also getting a better reception than Barbarian, Cregger’s last film which in some circles is considered a new horror classic, but now Weapons is sure to make a list like that without question.
Now we figure out how Weapons will perform at the box office against the likes of the quickly-dropping Fantastic Four, and if these scores will help it take the weekend. I think they might.
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