by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Cary Christopher, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Benedict Wong, Amy Madigan
Intro:
... absolutely not to be missed.
Horror movies are, ideally, scary. That’s obvious. Sometimes they’re smart, sometimes they’re funny and quite often they’re disturbing. What horror movies are generally not, however, is surprising. Horror flicks perhaps more often than any other genre frequently adhere to the same tropes and templates, iterating rather than innovating. Which is fine, honestly, because not everything needs to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it’s fun just to see a masked killer hack up directionally challenged teenagers or watch a cursed doll make life miserable for some rich wankers. However, when a surprising horror movie comes along, something that you can’t predict or fathom while you’re watching it, you know you’re experiencing something very special. Writer/director Zach Cregger delivered one such film with his 2022 debut, Barbarian. And now, against all the odds, he gifts us with another one, Weapons, which is absolutely not to be missed.
Weapons is set in the small town of Maybrook, Illinois. The place is in a state of shock because recently, on a single night, 17 children left their homes at 2:17AM and haven’t been seen since. Naturally, suspicion falls on the teacher whose class the absent nippers attended. Poor Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) has become a pariah in her home town as grieving parents and superstitious locals call her a witch and worse. There’s also the question of young Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), the one student from the class who didn’t bugger off into the ether. We also follow the lives of father of a missing kid, Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), alcoholic cop and Justine’s ex, Paul Morgan (Alden Ehrenreich) and local drug enthusiast and incompetent klepto, Anthony (Austin Abrams). How these characters interact and the story slowly spun is far too delicious to spoil. Needless to say, however, there’s a lot going on here and watching the various strands eventually link up and form a complete tapestry is a legitimate pleasure.
Performances are superb with Garner doing great work as the complicated but (mostly) well intentioned teacher. Brolin is also very strong as the conspiracy minded father who will stop at nothing to find his child. Alden Ehrenreich does fine work as a cop who can’t quite keep it together, but it’s Amy Madigan who steals the show as young Alex’s eccentric aunt. Trust us on this one.
Cregger once again proves to have a masterful control of shifting tones, delivering armrest grippingly scary suspense sequences followed by wry, knowing moments of laugh-out-loud comedy. It’s a bloody hard tightrope walk but Cregger makes it look easy, ratcheting up the suspense and chuckles exactly when they’re needed. On the slender negative side, the film spins its wheels a little too long in the second act, however an outstanding, eye-popping climax and denouement more than make up for any flab in the mid section.
2025 has been a year of absolute genre bangers. We’ve had Sinners, Bring Her Back, 28 Years Later and Together to name but a handful. Despite this fact, Weapons stands out as one of, if not, the year’s best. Propulsive, engaging, strikingly original, genuinely scary and frequently funny, Weapons is a sweet-but-nasty surprise and a dark delight for horror fans everywhere.
