Weapons

At its best, Weapons delivers some genuinely sharp scares. I caught myself covering my face more than once, and at least one moment had not just me but the entire theater tensed up, holding our breath together. Furthermore, the characters do the leg work for most of this film. Surprisingly believable, grounded, and relatable enough that the horror feels like it could be happening next door. They aren’t just cannon fodder; they carry a weight of realism that makes the terror sting more (Outstandingly so Josh Brolins character and Benedict Wongs character). Add in some solid cinematography and a fitting score, and on the surface, Weapons looks like a strong entry into the genre. But then the question comes: what is the movie about, exactly? That’s where things crumble. The community plot, the missing children mystery, essentially the backbone of the story, get shoved aside so we can wander into subplots about a grumpy cop and a burnout druggie. Sure, they circle back into the “grand scheme” eventually, but the detour kills momentum and leaves the film unfocused. Stranger still are moments that feel unintentionally baffling: the floating gun above the house, the random witch lady appearing in the dream/woods sequence… imagery that wants to imply some larger wrongness, but without context or connective tissue, it plays more like bizarre pop ups, rather than mystery. I like to think I can appreciate subtlety, but this isn’t one of those times where ambiguity pays off. To make things worse, the trailers sold a very different kind of film, one with a sharper mystery and tighter tension. Instead, the movie keeps veering between tones. There are stretches of dark, broody atmosphere that suddenly give way to what feels like outright comedy or wild cop/robber hijinks. The jokes land, but they pull the rug out from the horror, making the final act feel like a stumble across the finish line rather than a payoff. At the end of the day, the more I sit with the film, the more I come to dislike it. I'm not totally sure what Jordan Peele saw in this film, but for me it reads less like a master piece, and more like I film I'll likely never touch again.