Weapons is a 2025 horror film set in a quiet little town in Pennsylvania.
The story begins with the sudden and mysterious disappearance of seventeen children from the same elementary school class, all at the same time, in the middle of the night, and then follows various protagonists in specific chapters.
They try to understand what happened to the children as paranoia and suspense creep in.
I’m not going to lie, I saw the movie in theaters quite late, so I was partially spoiled on the plot.
Would I have liked the movie better without knowing the supernatural element behind it? Probably.
Would I have the same criticisms? Honestly, yes.
Barbarian vs Weapons
The movie was made by Zach Cregger, who is behind the great Barbarian, so I was pretty confident about the tone and potential plot twist.
The casting is very good, the characters all make bad choices due to varying degrees of stupidity or fear, and they only rely on two jump scares, so that’s something.
I’ve read quite a few interviews about the movie and I understand its production a little better.
Cregger wrote a rather rough draft following the sudden death of one of his friends, and the whole thing was turned into a script.
The audience feedback is mostly good, but unfortunately I don’t necessarily agree.
A few things to improve
The plot is very interesting on paper, and the reasoning behind it is sound, but something is missing.
An impact.
Any impact.
I don’t necessarily appreciate the chaptering of the action, knowing that it makes us revisit certain unnecessary scenes from different angles, with characters that didn’t interest me.
It also bothered me that their lighting budget was so low that only the music guided my suspense, because I clearly couldn’t see that there was someone else in the room before any attack.
I can excuse it for a film that plays on the senses, like Wolfman, but in a thriller, it’s a bit more of a bummer.
And then, well, this is really a very personal take, but the only characters who aren’t white and straight suffer the worst atrocities, and that rubs me the wrong way.
But on a more positive side, even if it was just a cameo, this is one of the few films where Justin Long doesn’t die or get tortured, so bonus points for him! No tusks this time buddy !
I really like Zach’s usual writing style and the way he splits up the stories, but in this case I think it really didn’t work for him, and that the tension would have built more easily in an investigation format.
We could have discovered what was happening in the house at the same time as the characters…
We could follow the protagonists as they discover clues…
Or even just see Justine react to the fact that her hair has been cut off ? For example.
Kidnapping or PSA ?
There are some very good foundations and some very good jokes.
It deals with mass murders and addiction without dwelling on the topics too much, which is nice.
The Naruto run is pretty fun, and Gladys’ visuals are perfection.
But, and that’s just my personal taste, I don’t think there are enough deaths.
I fully understand the torture of being paralyzed or seeing your loved ones in a vegetative state and that kind of psychological pain. I also understand that it’s more realistic than going completely on a gory or supernatural ride, but the impact of the story lay in the disappearance of the children, and in the end we don’t see anything happen to them at all. It’s literally just a kidnapping, except for a blink-and-you-miss-it moment with Gladys.
In the scenes that are visible because they take place outdoors -at the end-, we can clearly see that they are unharmed, except for psychological control, so Gladys was feeding on… their presence alone?
Their blood without leaving any trace ?
It’s a little anticlimactic, especially when you consider that in Barbarian, for example, the names of the tapes were more than explicit. Of course with children it has to be different, but going from that to nothing ?
I’m not at all into violence against children, that’s not what I’m highlighting here, it’s just that the whole premise revolves around them and their disappearance, and inevitably, the only thing they risked was malnutrition from eating too much mushroom soup during their captivity.
That’s not a horror movie, that’s just a weird PSA about eating disorders.
Lighting budget : the real horror
The movie is still enjoyable to watch a few times.
Some already consider it a classic of its genre, and it is indeed of better quality than the mainstream horror films that have been released in recent years… but I’d like to give them a little extra money for LEDs, so that I can enjoy the €15 I spent to see something other than the reflection of the “Exit” sign in the theater during the scenes in the house.
I’m glad that it has a huge following, I just don’t see it becoming a cult classic for me.
Let’s hope the prequel story about Gladys is better.
My rating : 2,5/5 bats.
🦇🦇🦇🥣🥣
(Picture a half-eaten bat here, the emojis won’t let me do it)