Written And Directed by Zach Cregger
Narrator: "This is a true story that happened in my town. So this one Wednesday is like a normal day for the whole school, but today was different. Every other class had all their kids, but Mrs. Gandy's room was totally empty. And do you know why? Because the night before, at 2:17 in the morning, every kid woke up, got out of bed, walked downstairs, and into the dark... and they never came back."
2025 might be a contender for horror movies and if Barbarian wasn't an impressive showcase of Zach Cregger's credentials, then Weapons really showed what he was capable of.
Focusing on the disappearance of seventeen children, this movie was broken in five segments. The first focused on schoolteacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner). She bore the brunt of the community who blamed her for the missing kids and yeah, a jealous wife of a former lover to boot.
The second segment focused on Paul Morgan (Alden Ehrenreich). He's a cop that cheated on his wife, Donna (June Diane Raphael) with Justine while also getting into it with a local drug addict. As cops go, he's rather bad at his job and seemed to be no close to solving the case of the missing kids.
The third segment focused on drug addict, James (Austin Abrams). He's stealing to fund his habit, barely escaping Paul's wrath in the process, encountering a creepy woman. Then both Paul and James wound up in the house of the only kid not to go missing and things really took quite a turn.
The fourth character to be focused on was Principal Marcus Miller (Benedict Wong) and his husband, Terry (Clayton Farris). Thanks to the main antagonist, one of them died horribly and then the other attacked Justine and grieving parent Archer Graff (Josh Brolin). That person also received a very grisly death.
The last characters to be focused on were Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher) and Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan). The former was the only student who didn't go missing and the latter wasn't really Alex's aunt. Nope, she was a creepy witch who needed the kids lifespan to sustain herself.
If there's an award for the most creepy and hate worthy horror villain this year, it might be Gladys. She's genuinely horrifying in parts, delightfully funny and the level of carnage she caused was something. She also got one of the most satisfying deaths seen onscreen this year too.
- Sara Paxton popped up again as a parent of one of the missing kids. She's Zach Cregger's wife in real life.
- Originally, it was Pedro Pascal, Renate Reinsve, Brian Tyree Henry, Austin Abrams, Tom Burke, and June Diane Raphael were cast in the film. Only two of the cast members remained with this production.
- Standout music: George Harrison's Beware Of Darkness and MGMT's Under The Porch.
- Chronology: Maybrook, Pennsylvania. Wednesday at 2.17am, the kids went missing.
Weapons certainly proved that Zach Cregger does have the horror credentials to make name for himself. This was certainly an excellent character piece with a truly compelling antagonist with Gladys.
Rating: 8 out of 10
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