Weapons

 

Hair Of The Stick 
That Bit Me

Weapons
Directed by Zach Cregger
USA 2025
New Line Cinema
UK cinema release print.

After containing my disappointment that the movie in question does not include a return to cinema for Chesty Morgan, I went to my local cinema to take a look at Weapons, because both the trailer and the one short clip I’d seen of it were, if nothing else, certainly intriguing. And, I would add that the film, while not great as some people have been hailing it, is certainly not a bad movie either and, though I was disappointed by some obvious aspects of it, it certainly kept me entertained throughout... so that’s pretty good. 

The film concerns the events of a day when Justine (played by Julia Garner) shows up to teach the kids in her third grade class and 17 of the 18 children in that specific class did not show up to school that day. This is because, at 2.17* that morning, all the kids ran out of their homes and ran off, disappearing into the night. So, naturally, the townsfolk aren’t very happy with Justine, who they all think is somehow responsible. Especially Archer, played by Josh Brolin, who lost his son to the incident too. 

The film then unfolds events to a total resolution of that story, split into chapters and each telling a portion of the events through the point of view of different characters. Such as Benedict Wong as the principal of the school, or Alden Ehrenreich as an ex-alcoholic cop. 

Now, the critics have been saying two things about this film that have me annoyed. One is that some of them are citing Rashomon as the way in which the narrative works. Now I’m assuming not many of them have read the original story on which Rashomon is based but, even if they are, as I suspect, referring to Akira Kurosawa’s excellent movie version... well, I have to wonder if any of them are actually familiar with that movie at all. That film (and story) tells of the same incident taking place over the same time from different points of view and, like Mario Bava’s sex comedy version Four Times That Night, each viewpoint recalls the same events in a much different way, relying on memory and interpretation of what has been seen. This film doesn’t do that. 

So, no, it’s not Rashomon. 

What it is more like is a series of Matryoshka dolls with each one presented reflecting what you’ve already seen but then taking you a little further into the same narrative from when you left it last. And that works fine as a somewhat gadgety narrative structure... even if it’s not completely necessary much of the time. It at least allows the story to build some kind of suspenseful impetus by not revealing everything at once... a tactic also employed by the cinematography which tends to focus on people and then move slowly over to what they are seeing, to imbue the shot with tension, as the environment a character is standing in is slowly revealed (thus harbouring the potential of a jump scare... even though that doesn’t happen that often). 

The other thing which annoys me is critics saying the movie makes no sense. It totally does, everything is fully explained and even the big visual metaphor we get at one point... which somehow left some critics pretty baffled.... seems a little too obvious, it seemed to me. However, I would have much preferred the film if it had left a lot of things hanging because, frankly, the film makes the same mistake as the popular (with everyone except me) Longlegs (reviewed here), in that it not only explains things too much but, delving firmly into a specific kind of folk horror, it gives the movie an actual main antagonist and, to be honest, the film suffers from it. Giving the film an actual villain to focus on not only denies the mystery of the film but, in this case, also leaves little flaws in the logic that governs the way in which the main antagonist weaponises people in the film. Which kind of sucks and ensures that I probably won’t be picking this one up on Blu Ray because, once it’s all been explained, I don’t feel the need to watch this one again. 

So... yeah. Weapons is a fine film in the horror tradition for sure. If anything, it feels like the kind of thick spined best selling novels that both Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz were putting out in the 1980s. And I do feel that this movie would have made a better, 600 page plus novel than the format it’s ended up in. But, you know, very nice to look at, some good performances, some intense moments but, for me at least, not really essential viewing. 

*Room 217 is the infamous room in the Overlook Hotel in the original Stephen King novel The Shining (though not in the movie versions of both that and the follow up, Doctor Sleep).