Weapons (2025) - 8/10

“A lot of people die in a lot of weird ways in this story” a child’s voice informs us as we’re introduced to a small American elementary school. Creepy and weird is what this is going for and it hits the mark. What’s scarier than a whole class of children going missing in the night, running out of their homes, alone, into the dark. Just one class, new teacher, Justine’s (Julia Garner) class. It’s her experience we follow first, as we see her vilified by parents like Archer (Josh Brolin), who are understandably upset. She’s in the dark too though and needs answers. There’s one boy who didn’t walk off unexplained into the night, Alex (Cary Christopher), but she’s told by the school to stay away, let things cool off. Justine though is a little tense. Her only friend it seems is her ex, Paul (Aidan Ehenreich), a cop, but he’s got his own issues. So she takes matters into her own hands and visits Alex’s house, where things get weirder. As set-ups go, it’s pretty brilliant. We know something spooky has happened, but in a country where awful things happen around schools, it adds a real hard edge to the tension. Archer is not doing well, not coping. He’s angry, he’s impatient and dangerously obsessed. He starts his own investigation. We see the same series of events unfold from several view points. Including James (Austin Abrams), the local junkie who has a run in with Paul and finds out just how weird Alex’s house is. Tropes, it has a few, but boy does it use them well. In fact I get the feeling they’re there just to screw with you, make you feel like you got the size of Weapons. Trust me, you haven’t. The introduction of Gladys (Amy Madigan) puts pay to that, she’s Alex’s great aunt, which is by far the least remarkable thing about her. It’s imaginatively eerie and masterfully constructed. If the first act is engaging and the second throws a curveball, the third provides the sort of brilliant payoff that modern horror often falls short of.

8/10