Horror Watch: Weapons (2025)

Watched: 10/03/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Zach Creggar

Y'all, I did not think Weapons (2025) was a good movie, so if you love it, you might as well either close this post or leap to the comments to tell me I didn't get it.

Weapons was a big f'ing deal when it came out.  Horror fiends lauded it, and it's still tracking at an 81 on Metacritic.  So, I know that much like Taylor Swift, it's me.  I'm the problem.

I didn't look into it much, but I suspect that what people love is Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys - a role which won Madigan an Oscar.  So that's a sign of something.  But I am also not surprised Amy Madigan did a good job at acting, because I know who Amy Madigan is.

With the evidence of two movies, this one and Barbarian, I also think Zach Creggar is excellent at coming up with a compelling first act but actually bad at doing anything with the premise he's set up.  

At some point, this movie became *tedious*, and that is not a word I use lightly.  

The film is so recent, I won't bother with a synopsis.  I will say I was surprised that in addition to Madigan and Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Aldren Ehrenreich and Benedict Wong were in the film.  I hadn't known they were.  I'm not sure anyone else is doing anything particularly interesting (except for how Wong is always interesting just showing up), but it helps along the movie that there's actors in it who can help carry it along.

Of all the complaints I might have had about Weapons "I don't know whose movie this is, and I don't understand why I have to watch it over and over inside the movie" wasn't what I anticipated discussing.

A close second sure wasn't "where is the FBI?" and "no one thought to wonder where the kids were going and track them on doorbell cams?"  And that is followed swiftly by "what was Aunt Gladys actually doing?"  Because her plan is stupid.

And that's really the thing.  Everyone in this movie sort of seems like they've had a partial lobotomy, and to tell the story Creggar wants to tell, nothing works the way it would.  

There's no press when 17 elementary-aged children go missing all at once?  This would be a headline story for *weeks* across the country.  The FBI doesn't step in?  State cops?  It's just the Barney Fifes of this town claiming they can handle it?  And no parents screaming to anyone who can hear?  And no one notices some *very weird shit* is happening with the one kid left?  

Why doesn't anyone wonder where the kids went?  Why aren't the police looking at all the videos to see what Brolin figures out?

I can see movies getting it wrong because we'd never seen a classroom of kids die, but we've seen that now, way way way too much.  So I don't even know what this is.  Is the inaction part of Aunt Gladys' doing?  It doesn't seem like it.  It just seems like everyone exists in a movie bubble where if they did the ten logical possible things one could do, the movie would be over.

I have to assume Aunt Gladys (who I assume is in no way Alex's actual aunt and that was also some dark magic nonsense) was hanging onto the kids as part of some vampiric hoo-hah to sustain her longevity.  But why take a single class?  Why not just nab kids from across a major metroplex?  Is Aunt Gladys dumb, too?

Anyway, it all just felt like Creggar had this idea for an opening and an idea for an ending (which is, admittedly, not bad) but everything else in between is dumb.  It is a dumb sandwich.

A good, weird character can make a movie - I'm the first to admit that.  But I usually expect it in something a bit more camp.  And I guess this is supposed to be camp?  

Structurally, I don't mind some non-linear storytelling.  I think I'm a guy who whole-heartedly embraces it.  But here, we just keep retreading the same story.  There's no reason for it.  It's all flash and zero substance, which makes it, I hate to say, just sort of bad writing.  It feels that Creggar thinks we're all so dumb we need to be shown every goddamn thing that happens when, I assure you, I would have gotten it with a line or two because I'm not a fucking idiot.  You're not going to believe this, but I understood our baddie got to Marcus before we stopped the whole damn movie to show it.

Anyway.  I am unclear on why this movie was called Weapons.  I don't know why Josh Brolin saw an AR-15 in the sky, and at this point, I don't much care.  

If you drop in the comments and tell me "everything can be answered by magic" then this is a dumb movie where the witch could have done many other things that were less stupid, but I do like that she had literally the same bathrobe as the one my mom had in 1982.