Weapons 2025

My recent viewings of horror-fantasy-sci-fi movies have been mostly disappointing and usually after watching them I would throw down my remote in disgust and disappointment over wasting my time with them. Happily I can say that my recent viewing of the newish horror film “Weapons” was greeted by me with pleasure and dread. Finally a smart and successful horror movie that creeped me out in a big way. Directed with flair and assurance by the youngish director Zach Cregger who joins the ranks of several other audacious creators including the “Daniels” that's Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, (Everything Everywhere All At Once) Sean Baker (Anora ) and Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems co directed with his brother Benny and Marty Supreme which he did on his own) all of these mavericks have had and are having major critical and popular hits and winning Oscars galore. They are the children of the Coen Brothers.

A usual and common trait that many horror movies like “Weapons” have is that they generally take place in quiet bucolic small towns across the U.S.A where horrible things can and usually happen. The sweeter the town the more horrible things will happen there. This is indeed the case with “Weapons” that opens with a voice over narration from a young girl who tells us about the time seventeen young school children disappeared from the same 3rd grade class. This begins chapter one of six that gives us the perspectives of six of the main characters that intersect with each other and caused me great stress, excitement, and dread.

The opening scenes of the children mysteriously running out of their homes very late at night will remain with me for a long time. They are haunting, strange and easily the most beautiful scenes that I have seen in a film this year. The stills give some idea of their strangeness and haunting beauty. When I first saw the trailer for the film on t.v. These scenes stopped me dead in my tracks and I would watch the trailer over and over. Why are they running with their arms outstretched like birds in flight and where are they running to at this very late night or very early morning hour of 2:17 a.m.

Let's not forget that this is a horror film and it is as far fetched and far out as any film of this genre I have ever seen. That it is far fetched is not a put down as the history of this genre is full and filled with far fetched and far out plots and images. Remember that big ape sitting on top of the Empire State Building?

So this film, this horror of a movie is also a mystery since we don't know what happened to these 17 children and won't really know until the final shocking and fantastic last minutes of the film that runs a little over 2 hours, quite a long length for a B horror flick. And even then the mystery will remain unanswered left up to our imaginations to figure out what we just witnessed.

In the meantime the stories of the 6 major characters flow past us including the school teacher of the kids who is played by the always marvelous Julia Garner. She is blamed for this incident by the parents of the missing children, especially by the nasty dad played by a surprising Josh Brolin who gives Julia a very hard time but will come to change his mind as the story moves on. A big snort of pleasure comes when we are presented with the character of Aunt Gladys played with relish and vividness by Amy Madigan who might just win a supporting actress Oscar this spring. I can say no more about her as I will be accused of being a spoiler and we can't have that, but oh Mary that red wig of hers. And you will never look at a can of Campbell's chicken noodle soup the same way after seeing this movie. One of the ten best films of 2025 (so far).