David Farnor | On 30, Oct 2025

Director: Zach Cregger
Cast: Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich
Certificate: 18

At 2.17am, in the small town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania, 17 children go missing at the same time. All members of the same third-grade class, their disappearance immediately leads everyone to suspect their teacher, Justine (Julia Garner), who is just as clueless and upset by the event as everyone else. What ensues is a thoughtful study of trauma and mob justice, an unsettling suburban mystery and a weird slice of surreal horror, all at the same time.

Writer-director Zach Cregger, who previously helmed Barbarian, isn’t afraid of hot button topics, so the moment we land in Maybrook, it’s hard not to expect an allegory about school shootings or gun control. But Cregger has crafted something much quieter and slower than a button-pushing genre flick, cycling through the events and the aftermath from the perspectives of different residents.

The result is an immersive and atmospheric collage of confusion and pain that gives the ensemble ample opportunity to sink their teeth into the quietly eerie material. Julia Garner is the superb emotional actor for the mystery, as the alcohol-reliant outsider faces not only her fear of what happened but her dismay at suddenly being alienated and separated from the one boy left behind – Alex, played with stoic naivety by the excellent Cary Christopher. Josh Brolin is wonderfully gruff as the parent trying to solve the puzzle with a Zodiac-like intensity that easily descends into anger. Alden Ehrenreich is suitably unlikeable as a local copy who’s far from a hero, and Benedict Wong is a thoughtful presence as Marcus, the school headteacher who is trying to hold the town together.

The muted mosaic takes a turn for the weird the more we delve into the darkness beneath the society’s surface – including unearthing more about Alex’s family, most notably his aunt Gladys (a scene-stealing Amy Madigan). And yet the more we find out, the more perplexing the whole situation becomes, as Cregger balances mind-snapping twists with strangely simple scares. It’s a hypnotic party trick, one that scratches our collective itch for control, as grief drives the community crazy. We end up like everyone else on screen, wandering about lost, trying to make sense of it all. And that, you suspect, is partly the point. What a wonderful, haunting oddity this is.

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