EXCLUSIVE: Benedict Wong breaks silence on Weapons, his first horror role since Hellraiser; reveals, “I stopped watching horror after Hellraiser, but this one was different”

By Ryan Lobo -

July 30, 2025 - 2:20 PM IST

In a career marked by compelling performances across film, TV, and stage, Benedict Wong steps into new territory with Weapons, the upcoming psychological horror from the makers of Barbarian. Wong plays Marcus, the upright principal of Maybrook Elementary—a man whose calm authority is put to the test when the unthinkable happens: the children vanish.

EXCLUSIVE: Benedict Wong breaks silence on Weapons, his first horror role since Hellraiser; reveals, “I stopped watching horror after Hellraiser, but this one was different”

In an exclusive conversation, Wong opened up about the complexity of his role and his own uneasy relationship with the horror genre. “Marcus is the principal of the school, and his role is to keep everything steady—he’s the one who holds the line,” Wong says. “He’s very much by the book, a pillar of the community, and when something like this happens under his watch, his first instinct is to restore balance.”

As the disappearance of the children sends shockwaves through the small town, Marcus finds himself at a moral and emotional crossroads. Among the chaos is Justine Gandy, a teacher at the school and Marcus’s longtime friend—played with nerve and nuance by another of the film’s key leads. Wong notes that the dynamic between Marcus’s personal relationships and professional responsibilities forms one of the film’s emotional cores. “His focus is on stabilizing the situation and making sure everyone—students, staff, and families—are safe and supported.”

It’s a grounded, human take on a role that exists in a film where much of the terror is anything but. And for Wong, stepping into a horror film at all is something of a personal surprise. “I have to make a real admission—I actually stopped watching horror after seeing Clive Barker’s Hellraiser,” he confesses with a laugh. “That film gave me nightmares, and I pretty much decided then that horror just wasn’t for me.”

But it was Weapons—and the pedigree of its creators—that changed his mind. “When Weapons came my way—and knowing the buzz around Barbarian—what struck me was how different this felt. It was original, unpredictable, and I could immediately tell it had the potential to be genuinely terrifying.”

Directed by Zach Cregger, Weapons is already being hailed as a chilling next step in modern horror, blending psychological unease with societal tension. Wong’s casting as a grounded, emotionally complex figure at the center of the chaos hints that this isn’t just about jump scares—it’s about human fragility and the systems we lean on when everything falls apart.

For an actor who once swore off the genre altogether, Benedict Wong’s return to horror feels both unexpected and, perhaps, a little poetic. If Marcus is the man who holds the line, Wong is the performer who finds the fault lines within him—and Weapons may be all the more powerful for it.

Also Read: EXCLUSIVE: Benedict Wong talks about Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff’s parallel realities in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse Of Madness – ‘That’s where all the trouble lies’