Weapons (Zach Cregger, August 8, 2025) Movie • Page 10

Yeah, the more I go down that rabbit hole, the more I start thinking about other aspects of it like Benedict Wong’s character being weaponized as well. He’s a gay man who falls prey to the “indoctrination” spell, and becomes violent. We’ve unfortunately seen real world instances where a school shooter has been a member of the LGBTQ community and the right wing media outlets then weaponize this information and use it as “evidence” that the LGBTQ community is “dangerous”. His character is in a loving, happy, fulfilling marriage, and then he just snaps and, as Justine states herself, “I just saw him and he was totally normal. He was never like this.” And again that’s an observation coming from the teacher in the film, which feels really important because she’s telling this to Josh Brolin’s character who is finally seeing through the disease of anger and lies for the first time and realizing Justine is also a victim. So I think it’s interesting to think about everything Cregger may be trying to say here and how that indoctrination and misinformation spreads through a community like a disease.

 

I liked this. Didn’t love it as much as I wanted to. Kind of a bummer (I think I generally reject certain aspects of this as a matter of personal taste). It’s good. I found certain things tedious. Certain aspects convenient. But I also found it scary and hilarious at times. A mixed bag that I would say ends up in the green when all is said and done.

 

This also reminded me of NOPE a lot, structurally and in the way it wears its influences on its sleeve but warps them into something really unique for the genre.

 

I fucking loved this. I thought Barbarian was amazing too and this might have even topped it, I had an absolute blast.

Really, really creative scares (the jump scare with Brolin in his kid's room was fucking genius, how it tricks you into thinking it's a fakeout, Brolin starts making his speech and crying and then it hits you for real), amazing direction/cinematography, extremely clever writing and also a huge amount of laughs too

I am all fucking in on Cregger at this point, he's made two of my favorite horror movies of the decade now

 

Oh man I forgot about Picnic At Hanging Rock. I have only seen that a single time when my dad had me watch it when I was a little kid. Still stuck with me.

Glad he mentioned Needful Things, because I did kinda get early 90's Stephen King adaptation vibes in this in like the best way. Especially around the campiness of the antagonist.

 

I just realized like 80% of the main cast here is in an MCU thing. You got Silver Surfer, Thanos, Wong, and Ezekiel Stane. What a great Summer of 2025 for Julia Garner.

Also June from HDTGM? as Paul the cop's wife kinda surprised me lol

 

And just like Nope, the more I think about it the more I’m liking it

 

Funny enough, the campiness of the antagonist was the one thing I WASNT sure about until that third act really clenched it for me.

Yeah, NOPE only gets better with time and repeated viewings. Movies like that tend to become my favorites.

 

This was cool. I probably need to sit with it a bit but I don’t think I loved it, it felt long. I did love the ending though.

 

I liked this, but not as much as I was expecting. I really liked the different character perspectives and the horror elements when they were there. I didn’t like many of the characters though. Alex and Archer were probably the only catchers I cared about.

Also lol at the witch and how she was killed. I wish we could’ve known what her endgame was though. It never revealed what she was going to do with the kids before she died. Obviously she was going to use them to heal herself, but how?

 

Is it early enough that you should spoiler tag some of that?

 

I thought it was pretty clear that she was a parasite feeding off the life force of others to keep her alive forever. (There are references to parasites in this movie like the nature documentary Markus and his partner are watching on tv). The rules for the magic give just enough information to understand on a visual level on how it works - and the payoff of Alex using it against her was really cathartic and a great "oh shit" moment.

 

Will be seeing this at 2 today, can’t wait

 

One thing I guess I didn't catch until I read a plot outline after was that Paul was the police chief's son in law. Which explains why he was getting breaks and special treatment.

Also gotta give it up for the great character actor Tony Huss as the police chief. Also having a great summer with the new KOTH revival.

 

Since I only shit on this, I should say that the performances are incredible, especially Julia and Alden. That scene with them in the bar was electric. And I think she did a lot of great “face acting” in the best way throughout the movie.

 

yea, just a classic old witch needing to keep herself alive

 

I will go ahead and voluntarily get bopped for this.

"Kinda outwardly frumpy teacher/librarian type who also has a wild side" is one of the vibes that i am very attracted to, and Julia Garner exemplified that in this lol

 

Nobody wanted to question why this little kid was buying all that chicken noodle soup?

 

I mean there are a lot of questions if you go down that rabbithole. How are the parent's bills getting paid? Why are their jobs not doing a wellness check on them? How do they poop? How did their fork wounds not heal/get infected after a month? Ect


Best to roll with the movie's logic and not think about it lol

 

because it’s good

next question

 

Honestly the cops doing one search of the house and aside from that the only other very suspicious suspects apart from the teacher not getting questioned or scrutinized more is the most wtf are these cops even doing part of the movie. Especially when everything about the house was suspicious as hell. [\spoiler] Much more head scratching than a kid buying a bunch of soup imo.

 

You gotta suspend some disbelief here - the biggest “that would never happen” is a third grade classroom with only 18 kids

 

We are told/shown many times over that the cops are terrible at their jobs lol

The Brothers' Grimm fairy tale vibe of the whole thing really helps me suspend disbelief, I think.