
11/08/2025
Weapons (2025)
A
Holy crap Y'all!
This show is Rated R and for good reason. I think most adults should be able to handle it, but leave the kiddos home! At risk of sounding like a prude, I hope your young ones were sheltered enough that this kind of movies is not a shrug and yawn.
When I was a kid, I was terrified of ghosts, black magic, and anything C.H.U.D.-adjacent and this film would have traumatized me for life!
I didn't really start watching in the Horror genre until decades later and found that like all genres, much of it is dreck, but some of it is really good!
THIS is one of the really good ones!
I have not seen anything so original and so well put together as this film! It is basically a Horror/Mystery and it depends on having the story roll out as you watch it and therefore you don't want any spoilers. It works best going in completely green. I won't spoil it for you.
The theater is the best place to watch this. I watched it in standard-format, and I don't see how 3-D, XD, or any of the gimmick screens would add much. It doesn't need it!
What does add to it is the shared experience of the theater. Having that communal moment with a big room of strangers really shows how connected we all are. The fine crafting of the film really helps! All throughout the film, we (the audience) gasped together, swore together, and laughed together...just to gasp together again! It was quite a ride and was made better with a crowd. The tension was so thick, so quickly, that every B-hole in the theater puckered and stayed clenched for the next 2 hours!
The tension was so suffocating that a knock at the door nearly made the entire theater “ahh hell naw-ed” as one!
The format was very interesting:
Tell a portion of the story from one character, and then see the same time period with another character and another. With each new perspective you get to see the connections, and as they weave together, you get more and more of the grander story. I’ve seen several movies try this and it often doesn't work well, but it was done masterfully in this one!
The mystery was so good. The suspense started immediately and just builds and builds. The action does not come at you in drips and drops, it literally runs right at your face and you can't look away!
The cinematography was excellent! Everything was lit perfectly for the mood and tone and it allowed the things you were supposed to see to actually be seen! You didn't miss one anxious moment! The sound design and score were on point and carried you right along.
I spent the entire movie trying to guess what was going to happen next, or to figure out why the thing that just happened, happened. It was all parsed out just right.
One extra creepy thing…not a spoiler:
There was this walk that happened (You’ll know it when you see it) that I wanted to point out. Mostly because I thought it was silly...at first...then it became one of the big confusing, scary things in the show. (You'll know it when you see it!)
So this silly walk happens. I sit there thinking how goofy it looks, but the walk keeps going on… and it changes from silly, to bizarre, to creepy as hell, and ends with one of the times the entire audience nearly crapped their pants in unison! When it was over we had no idea what happened, but we all knew it wasn't good...and it wasn't over!
The big reveal kinda wasn't. It was a fairly simple thing, really and we were walked right to it. Of course, by that time, the situation seemed impossible. The conclusion was super satisfying one one way, but there was a lingering "Yeah...but what about..." that has me still thinking about it.
This is one of my favorite things from a movie: The parking lot/water-cooler chat that comes later. So few films have that, but this is definitely one that has it! There's lots to talk about.
About the performances:
Julia Garner is perfectly cast here. Her character is so flawed, and impulsive, and interesting, and she just kills it! She was blessed with resting we-lost-the-farm-to-bankruptcy face and she uses it masterfully here!
Josh Brolin is playing a different kind of role, too. He is one of the "concerned parents" who lost a kid. (His kid was a dick and I thought; "Of course THAT'S his kid!) But he was still a father and was fighting blind through grief and torment and completely out of his depth. It's so cool to watch his character maneuver through the often sudden shifts of the story, too.
Benedict Wong was....I don't even know how to explain it. Glorious. He was such a key element and the contrast from the start of his story to end was crazy cool.
All I can say about Amy is Damn! I hated her character completely and I loved that! That's all I can say there, but damn!
The others were great too, no wasted characters.
Something I really appreciated was that all the "scary" was earned. There were no cheap jump-scares or dumb gimmicks. All the reveals were creepy and completely logical. It didn't waste time with fake-outs and such...it didn't have time for them and it need them!
So, bottom line:
This was a refreshingly original film that truly messed with me! For a horror, there's really no better praise.
Also...there's nothing mid or post credits. When the show is over, it's over