I had no significant interest in seeing Zach Cregger‘s Barbarian when it first hit theaters in 2022, but the movie got enough “holy crap you have to see the twist” reactions opening weekend that I took the plunge. Luckily, the movie delivered on those shocking expectations, so I was understandably quite interested to see how he would top himself. The marketing for his follow-up movie Weapons was much more intriguing than the Barbarian campaign, making the movie one of my more anticipated experiences of the year. While I caught the movie in theaters earlier this summer, Weapons is out now on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital, so what better time to revisit it?

In an entirely normal town, 3rd-grade teacher Justine (Julia Garner) comes in to class one morning and notices only one of her students is there, with all the other children having vanished in the night. She’s not the only one who notices, as Archer (Josh Brolin) is a parent whose child has vanished, while Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) is a cop alarmed by the situation. Based on doorbell cameras and security footage, 17 kids woke up in the middle of the night and ran into the woods for no apparent reason, sparking a paranoid mystery about where they went.

One of the key components of Barbarian‘s success was the way it intentionally injected comedy into the horrifying premise, with these tonal shifts keeping audiences on their toes. The premise of Weapons is highly intriguing, arguably making it one of the more perplexing horror movie experiences of the summer. A drawback to just how much potential the premise offers in the way of a terrifying narrative is that, if the back half of the movie doesn’t satisfy audiences, it can taint the whole experience. With Barbarian, fans were given a familiar horror premise in the first half but were taken into an entirely unexpected realm. With Weapons, the premise is what felt unique, while the back half ventures into more familiar territory for the horror genre. By circumventing expectations in the first half as opposed to the back half, I left the movie being a bit underwhelmed, given the potential of that first half, but Weapons is one of the year’s standouts.

Still, from the performances to the story to the general creepy and mysterious vibes, Cregger is doing his own thing and using his own original voice to tell the stories he wants to tell. That first half is so effective and so bizarre that it’s hard not to get swept up in the absurdity of the situation.

Akin to the mysteriousness of Nicolas Cage’s character in last year’s Longlegs, the marketing for Weapons left out one of the most talked-about elements: Gladys. Played by Amy Madigan, Gladys emerges at a key point in the story, and her trajectory sheds insight into everything that unfolds in Weapons. The less said about Gladys, the better, though the nature of movie audiences and their desire to have their hand held has sparked a lot of theories about who Gladys is, where she came from, and how she became intertwined in this story. In fact, Cregger himself has implied that we could be getting a whole movie that explores the backstory of Gladys somewhere down the line, though the timing of that experience has yet to be confirmed.

The home video release includes three featurettes about the film: “Director Zach Cregger: Making Horror Personal,” “Weaponized: The Cast of Weapons,” and “Weapons: Texture of Terror.” None of these sheds much insight on Gladys, which is sure to frustrate some audiences, though those of us who know how irrelevant her backstory is might actually appreciate the home video release keeping her history shrouded in darkness.

The first featurette dives into the development of Weapons and offers some interesting information about how Cregger conjured the film. Cregger explained how he started the process while attempting to cope with the grief he experienced over the death of his friend, with the senselessness of the premise of Weapons reflecting the senselessness of someone you love dying. The structure of the narrative has the story jumping to explore the events from each main character’s perspective, with Cregger confirming how each character is a reflection of his own personality. Even the more supernatural elements featuring parents under an otherworldly control serve as a metaphor for Cregger’s experiences with substance abuse in his own family.

“Weaponized” explores how the cast came together and features interviews with them about why they got interested in the project. Interesting, while Garner, Brolin, Ehrenreich, and Benedict Wong went on to star in the movie, their roles were originally going to be played by Renate Reinsve, Pedro Pascal, Tom Burke, and Brian Tyree Henry, respectively. The closest the featurette comes to addressing this is Cregger noting that Garner wasn’t originally approached to play Justine, though he now can’t picture anyone else in the role. This featurette highlights an unexpected connection the movie has to the animal kingdom: while predators have eyes that are forward-facing, prey animals have eyes on the sides of their heads to be more aware of their surroundings. The makeup team found ways of making Garner’s eyes feel further apart, like prey, while Brolin and Madigan’s characters had their eyes more focused in front of them, replicating the eyes of a predator.

“Texture of Terror” showcases how the production itself came together, with Cregger explaining how, much like all of the characters come together to form this ensemble piece, this is similar to the crew of a movie all coming together to make a unified experience. It’s fun seeing the behind-the-scenes looks of some of the film’s more violent scenes, and while there are some teases about the tree Gladys owns in the movie and its significance, the most fascinating element is that this tree was actually pieced together from various species of trees to create a very specific look.

If you’re looking to get an expansive, deep dive into how Weapons came together or to get more information on the movie’s mythology, then this home video release likely won’t scratch those itches. However, if you’re looking to own one of the year’s most inventive and effective horror movies, you’re in luck, as Weapons is now available on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.